After eating their food, they were relaxing against the wall when Nate finally got up the nerve to ask them a question that could affect a lot of things. “What options do you have in your menus?”

  It might seem like an innocent question, and it mostly was. However, depending on how they answered, many things could change.

  Angie, somewhat languidly, looked over at him, her belly full and mind a little sleepy, took a few moments to respond. Flipping open the screen on her wrist computer, she eyed it for a moment before responding.

  “On the left seems to be all my vital information. It lists my realm, core, three attributes, and how much energy I’ve gathered in my current realm. It also lists my meditative art and energy skills. There is also space for companion beasts.”

  “Same,” Lindsay commented, looking at her screen.

  “On the right side of the screen,” Angie said, continuing where she had left off. “There are three primary options. Dungeon Interface, Items, and Storage. Clicking on them reveals more options.”

  Nate nodded, closing his eyes, but not saying anything. It was as he had feared. They didn’t have an option for the avatar. He needed to tell them of the risks involved, even if they were like Aura and could still come back to life in some way… It would be different than how it worked for him.

  The avatar dulled certain things, and even then some of his deaths had been plenty traumatic. However, having that buffer there was what had kept him sane and allowed him to move on. If he had been forced to experience having his actual body ripped apart and eaten as it had been so many times, without that buffer there when he woke… At a minimum, his personality would have undergone a change of some sort, likely toward the violent side.

  They needed to know what they could be getting into if they tried entering the dungeons with him and Aura at night for practice.

  “That is what I was afraid of,” Nate said, pulling up his own menu and going to ‘Don Avatar’. He selected their current dungeon and closed his eyes as he tapped the button.

  The three jumped in fright as a tall pillar emerged from the floor and then melted away just as quickly as it had appeared. In its place, another Nate was left standing there, looking at them. This one was wearing different armor and pants than the one on the floor and was also decked out for battle.

  “Huh, I wasn’t sure that would actually work with me still inside the dungeon.” He moved over and knelt in front of his sleeping form and lightly poked his cheek. A moment later, a dulled phantom sensation passed through to his avatar’s cheek. “Wow, that feels weird. Hmm, looking at myself in this way really makes me realize how much I need a haircut, and how crappy my sense of style is.”

  Angie mutely reached over and poked him. “What is going on? Nate, why are there two of you?”

  Lindsay frantically nodded her head, more than a little freaked out by what was going on.

  He took a seat, with his arms outstretched behind him. “This is what you three don’t have in your menus. It’s an avatar. When I enter the dungeons to practice and fight, I am doing it in my avatar. It serves as a bridge between everything I experience while here. Useful muscle memories, qi mediation, and all forms of pain. By having that gap, certain things take longer, but it also creates a distance in the mind between the pain and deaths I’ve experienced here. They’re duller than normal. Without an avatar, you won’t have that.”

  It took a few moments for the girls to understand what he was trying to say and when they did, both went several shades paler than before. It was something they hadn’t even thought about before that moment.

  He pulled up the menu again and left his avatar behind.

  From the others’ view, it appeared as though Nate simply melted into the floor of the dungeon. By the time he opened his eyes a moment later, the avatar had completely vanished.

  “That’s a little weird seeing that happen,” Angie muttered, before shaking her head and running a hand down her face. “So, what you’re saying is that if we die… we are going to feel everything, and there won’t be anything to help dull the memories for us.”

  “I can’t know that for sure, obviously, but yeah, that’s the worry. If you want to go in with us at night, assuming we figure out the method involved, then we’ll of course, be as careful as possible. However, we all know that accidents happen, and that goes triple in these dungeons.”

  Though, if he was being honest with himself, with a full party, many of the dangers that he and Aura had gone through in the past could have been avoided. As long as they avoided the stronger dungeons, they would likely be fine… for the most part. He would never guarantee anything, and there had been too many occasions when random bad luck got involved.

  There was always the chance of things going wrong, no matter what they did. Especially in the swarm dungeons.

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  “I’ll have to think about that,” Lindsay said seriously. “I know this is a good opportunity to grow stronger. You mentioned all the different kinds of orbs we can get, but the thought of dying repeatedly… well, it terrifies me.”

  Angie nodded emphatically.

  “As it should,” Aura informed them. “It’s not a pleasant experience, though you can learn a lot from it.”

  Nate pointed at the kitsune. “Trust what she says on the subject. Unfortunately, Aura knows what she’s talking about. When she and I first met, she went a little crazy for a while.”

  “Just a little,” Aura said, defending herself. “It was only a few deaths.”

  “Yeah, constantly, day after day.” He muttered. “For like a week straight.” Nate stood and dusted off his pants. “Anyway, come on. That’s most of what I wanted to show and do with you. Everything else we can do later, or I can show you on the road with the other dungeons. Now that you can at least see my screens showing you things won’t be an issue.”

  With that, they stood up and began heading back through the dungeon.

  They hadn’t changed anything in this part of the dungeon, so outside of the lights dimming twice, the dwarves hadn’t even noticed anything.

  Without a problem, or even so much as a glance, they walked past a few golems and entered the area the dwarves had claimed. Sitting to the side, picking at his teeth, was a different dwarf than the one they had met from before. He looked up at them as they approached and stood. His eyes roved over each of them in turn, taking longer on Aura than the others.

  “Well, you certainly look different than what I was told. Calling you three tall dwarves does tall dwarves a disservice.” He pulled at his carefully braided beard. “There’s not enough hair on any of your faces to make one of these.”

  The words he spoke were automatically translated on the screens, each of them had pulled up.

  “We’re girls!” Lindsay protested, pointing at Angie and herself. “We don’t typically grow facial hair.”

  With a roll of her eyes, Aura began to act as a translator for the group once more.

  In his past life, Nate hadn’t started to grow facial hair until he was twenty years old. Then, once he got sick, what little he had possessed had mostly vanished. He was the type of person who had only needed to shave once a month. His father, Niall, could grow facial hair just fine, so being a cultivator didn’t seem to have an effect on that particular bodily function. At least not in their current realm.

  Regardless, he was curious as to how he might turn out. So far, he hadn’t shown so much as a single sign of hair growing on his face.

  “Eh, even our women typically get some hair on their faces and have to constantly trim their bushy eyebrows.” The dwarven man seemed to like the thought of hairy women, while the others all shook their heads. He spat to the side. “Fine, your race’s women are mostly hairless, but what is his excuse?”

  Nate shrugged. “I’m a late bloomer. I just haven’t started growing hair yet, is all.”

  The entire time they were talking, he was leading them through the tunnels.

  “Why do you want these gems so badly?” Nate asked the dwarf a few moments before they joined the main group of miners.

  As usual, Aura sent the message directly to him, though this time she also included the rest. The rest of the dwarves looked up as they received her images and words inside their heads.

  The dwarf they had spoken to earlier, the one who seemed to be the leader of the group, looked up and was the one to answer. “There are a few reasons. They’re pretty, and some of them are tasty or useful for weapons and items. The main reason though, is because these gems are related to the magic our people practice. The metal we find is nice as well, though that is currently useless to us. We need to set up some blacksmith and smelting locations. However, we won’t be able to do that while we are inside this place.”

  “Do you have any method of contacting your people on the other side of the portal at all?” Nate asked.

  From everything he had seen, the answer was likely no. Outside of the time during Samhain each year in which they go back through the portal, he didn’t think they could normally. However, thinking it, and having it confirmed firsthand, were two entirely different things.

  If they did, then it would be possible to significantly speed things up inside this dungeon. It was a long shot, but still worth asking on the off chance.

  The dwarven leader shook his head in the negative. “It might be possible for those who are stronger, but those of us who choose to come through to this side haven’t reached that point in our journey.”

  It was as he had thought once they came through; they were cut off from their people. It was the same for the beasts.

  A while later, the group left the dwarves behind, taking their escort with them. As the next group to appear through the portal, should be some dwarves. Sure enough, as they neared the portal, it flashed and a few more dwarves stepped through it one at a time. The dwarf who had been escorting them waved at the new group and invited them to join the group. He began to explain everything to them while they continued walking through the dungeon.

  The dwarves escorted them a little farther before turning around, leery of leaving their area too far behind. From there on out, they would be on their own, not that they were worried. The golems would leave them alone, as long as they did the same.

  It was only the kobolds that they needed to worry about. In the current circumstances, not even they were a major concern. With all of them now able to monitor the camera screens, it would be next to impossible to sneak up on them.

  “Oh, look,” Lindsay said, grabbing their attention. “There are two kobolds about to enter the first trap room.”

  Each of them pulled up an additional camera screen and focused on the room Lindsay had designed. They were just in time to see the two kobolds entering the room. The lone nozzle and its long hose hung limp, angled toward them and ready. All that needed to be done was for one of the kobolds to trip the trigger.

  The kobolds were a semi-intelligent race, and while normally they would have been cautious of their surroundings, nothing had happened to them in this place. Instead, all of their focus was centered on the dangling object. Together, the two ran forward and were completely unprepared when the jet of powerful cutting water burst forth.

  The thin, powerful stream of water ran along the arm of the first one, cracking the scales along the way. At the elbow, where the scales were weak, the jet pierced in deeply disabling the arm. From there, the nozzle flipped around, cutting into its neck.

  The stream of water was powerful, but the downside was that it needed time to cut through something properly. It wasn’t instantaneous.

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