We were w oV when I had a thought. I turo Mahya and asked, “By the way, what happeo my clothes?”

  Mahya looked up, puzzled. “Your clothes?”

  “Yes, I woke up naked.”

  “Oh, that. They disied from the lightning. Some burned fragments were on the porch, but the house absorbed them.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yes.” She didn’t seem pleased as she said this, her eyes narrowing into a cold, murderous gre.

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I thought we resolved this.”

  “Yeah, until you reminded me of what an idiot you are.”

  I chuckled a back to work.

  It took us ahree days to finish engraving and assembling the ATV. Once everything was ready, Mahya ran some tests and appeared satisfied. Then she pricked her finger, letting a drop of blood fall onto a rune I had never seen before. There was a brief glow, and the rune vanished.

  Afterward, she instructed me, “Prick your finger a a drop of blood fall on this rune,” pointing to aical one nearby.

  I followed her instrus and asked, “What does it do? I’ve never seen that rune before.”

  “This rune is typically used for wood. But since you bined runes with magic scripts in magic circles, I decided to adapt that approad use woodcraft runes with meics. This ruuhe ATV specifically to you. Only you and I start it right now. After Al adds a drop of blood, only the three of us will be able to start or drive it. It’s a safety measure.”

  “Smart,” I nodded.

  She poio a small crystal to the right of the steering wheel and said, “Pour some mana into this one—five units should be enough—and it will start the ATV.” She then poio another crystal beside it and added, “A little maurns off the ATV. Remember, the right crystal turns it on, and the left turns it off. Other than that, you drive it normally, including using the gas, brakes, and shifting gears.”

  I took my pce behind the wheel and started the ATV. The engine was pletely silent, but I could se running. It was almost imperceptible, but I could feel a faint current flowing through the mae.

  “Oh, I remembered something else,” Mahya said, pointing to two additional crystals uhe windshield frame. “If you pour mana into the right crystal, a mana s will form to protect you from the wind. Pour mana into the left crystal, and the s will disappear.”

  “I wondered why you chose an ATV without a windshield.”

  “In worlds with mana levels of 30 and above, there are monsters and mas. You might o drive and shoot simultaneously. I preferred to omit the gss and use a mana s instead. I wasn’t sure how I would ma at first, but I was fident I would figure it out—and I did.”

  “Did I mention you’re a genius? I’ll repeat it—you’re a genius.”

  She ughed and replied, “Enjoy the oy.”

  I started driving and heard loud cheers from Mahya. Gng in the rearview mirror, I saw Mahya jumping like a loon, raising her fists triumphantly and whooping. I pulled the ATV back towards her; her joy seemed excessive for the ATV.

  “What happened?”

  Instead of answering, she popped out a s.

  You have demonstrated exceptional talent in magical engineering uhe guidance of a skilled Magiteventor and Engineer. Your impressive achievements in verting and modifying advanced maery have unlocked a unique css opportunity:

  New css unlocked: [Magieer]

  Would you like to take the Magieer Css as your sub-css?

  Note: Due to your notable aplishments, you take the Magieer Css without spending ability points, and its strength will be parallel to that of a main css.

  Y/N

  I jumped off the ATV, hugged her, picked her up, and spun her around, both of us ughing.

  After we calmed down from the celebration, I took Mahya for a ride oV.

  During the ride, Mahya said enthusiastically, “I’m so much closer to my dream.”

  “I thought your dream was to get this css, and you’ve achieved that now.”

  Mahya shook her head, her hands animatedly gesturing as she spoke. “No. My actual dream is to travel and explore space. The first time I attempted it, I did it somewhat recklessly. ime, I’ll be smarter.”

  Curious, I asked, “What are you pnning to do?”

  “I know spaceship engineering, antimatter engines, and spaceship AIs. In that respect, I’m covered. But I don’t think all of space is full of mana. It’s not feasible right now—I don’t have enough knowledge. One day iure, I want to build a spaceship that works on both antimatter and mana. I know it sounds impossible to have both simultaneously, but I learned a lot from the dead zone in your house. I pn to build something simir to protect the meical engine, and in another area, I’ll install a mana eh a core or even multiple cores. Then, I travel through space. I’ll use one or the other, depending on the circumstances.”

  “Why space? After all, the Gates lead to thousands of worlds. No matter how much we raise our vitality, we won’t live long enough to see them all.”

  Mahya’s voice grew thoughtful. “I don’t know how to expin it, but space speaks to me. I want to travel through spad visit new worlds without any people. The world we reached didn’t have a Gate at first, but it soon did. I spent a lot of time in the Archive searg for answers. Two articles suggest that Gates appear when people arrive to a world. I want to explore worlds where there aren’t any people. If I get bored, I always find an inhabited world. And sinhabited worlds have Gates, I tinue my travels from there.”

  That sounded iing.

  Once we returned, Rue hopped oV, his tail wagging, and I took him for a ride. “Rue want wind on fao s!” He informed me empathically.

  After we returned, I drove over to Mahya. “Rue insists on having the wind in his face. I prefer to avoid the bugs.”

  Mahya thought for a moment before responding. “How about we split the s? Your side be protected, and Rue’s be open.”

  I nodded, relieved. “That sounds perfect. I get to stay bug-free, and Rue gets his wind.”

  Rue’s excitement alpable. “Rue thank you! Rue love Mahya!” he said, thumping my face with his tail until I grabbed and held it.

  It took Mahya another day to figure out how to adjust the s to aodate our needs and ensure a fortable ride.

  The st item on our to-do list was the boat, which was still on the ke. I saw no reason to store it.

  “I’m going to get the core, and then I’ll help you with what’s needed,” I said as I prepared to leave.

  Mahya waved her hands dismissively. “No need.”

  I frowned. “Don’t you need help adjusting the system to the core and everything else?”

  She shook her head. “No. When I built the system, I desig assuming we’d get a core. So it’s all set up already. The only thing I haven’t tackled is the water purification system, like the one in your house.”

  She paused, her voice dropping an octave. “I have Lis’s book with the runes you gave me, but I haven’t studied it yet. I’m not pnning to dive into that right now. The aluminum balls you created are enough. Givehing I had to learn to work on the balloon and the motorcycles, I don’t have the energy for more studies at the moment. I’ll deal with it ter.”

  We pared the core to Mahya’s fist, noting the difference was tiny—maybe just two or three millimeters.

  We drew the magic circle on the back deck, Mahya ected to the core, and the core ected to the boat. It was a strange sensation. Even after perf the ritual to ect me to the sed core, I still felt a stant e to this one. Suddenly, it felt like something had been severed, leaving ay spa my awareness where something had once been. It gave me a peculiar sense of emptiness, like I was missing something.

  I shook my head several times, trying to rid myself of the feeling.

  Mahya ughed, saying, “The empty feeling will go away in a day or less.”

  “How did you know?”

  Mahya grinned. “Lis was ected to this core before you while we worked on the house. After we did the ritual with you, he experiehe same sensation you’re feeling now. But by the day, he said the feeling was gone.”

  Good to know.

  “Shall we try to feed it?” I asked.

  Mahya hummed thoughtfully and tilted her head from side to side. “Yes, but let’s start with something small.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Do you have anything particur in mind?”

  She shook her head. “No. What about you?”

  “Nothing. I fed everything to the house.”

  We stood on the deck, looking out over the valley.

  “There are a lot of trees here ...” Mahya ented, her voice trailing off.

  “Yes, but we also cut down a lot.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, her hauring in an arc at the ndscape. “This valley is pletely enclosed. People don’t e here. In all the pces Al picked mushrooms, new ones were already growing. The trees will take a little longer, but new ones will grow in their pce.”

  I frowned. “Trees take years to grow!”

  “Not at the mana levels here. Two or three years are enough for a tree to mature with mana level thirty or above.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, surprised.

  She nodded.

  How e I still didn’t know enough?

  I cut down a retively small tree, removing all the branches and cutting it into logs. Sihere was no room for two people in the engine area, I hahe logs to Mahya one by one.

  I heard her mutter as she received a log, “This is the first pce we’ll expand.”

  I y on my belly and peered into the engine area. Mahya pced one log onto the magic circle, and the boat sucked it in.

  Yes!

  Mahya whooped, jumped, and banged her head on the ceiling. I started ughing, and she gred at me. I healed her head, still ughing.

  We cut down a lot of trees. Once I learhey only wo or three years to grow back, I no longer felt bad about cutting them down.

  “If the trees grow so fast, why are they retively short?” I asked.

  “I think it’s the breed, not their growth potential.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I agreed.

  As we worked, we passed by some mushrooms. Beside one of them, Mahya suggested, “Maybe we should also colleushrooms for the boat?”

  “Al will kill us.”

  “We don’t have to tell him,” she replied with a grin.

  We exged a look and shook our heads in unison.

  “Bad idea,” she said.

  I nodded in agreement.

  After filling our ste—mine more than hers, sihe house and boat were outside, and I had plenty of room—we were ready to return to the boat. Cutting down all the trees took us five days, including breaks. We had to remove the branches and cut the trees into logs; the boat wasn’t big enough. But finally, our ste acked, auro the boat.

  We tried using the same method as my house: pg the materials on the ded telling the boat to absorb them. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The core was too small.

  For two days, we fed the core with logs and branches one by one, as that was the only way it worked. After two days, nothing happened when Mahya tried to feed the core with another piece of wood. The core was full. We pared it to Mahya’s fist, and it seemed to have grown another millimeter.

  Nice!

  I focused my attention on the boat to sense what was happening inside. Although I was no longer ected to the core, the boat was still full of my mana from the Restore, allowio get an x-ray-like view of the interior.

  Mahya gave it a and, and I felt things shifting. The boat’s hull moved, but I couldn’t grasp what was happening. I pulled back my attention and looked at the boat. I couldn’t see anything, probably because the ges were internal.

  “What did you tell it to do?” I asked.

  “Strehe hull and adjust the bottom to improve stability, and ehe engine area,” Mahya expined. “I don’t think we need anything else. We have enough room.”

  “Yes, that’s enough. If we need more spa the future, the core will grow by then, and we instruct it to expand as needed,” I agreed. “We still have a lot of wood. Let’s go feed it to my core.”

  “We should also cut some more trees. Let’s see its limit.”

  We cut down dozens of trees daily ahem to my house for a week. We didn’t o remove branches or cut the trees into logs this time. I instructed the house to open the deck, pced the trees on it, and told the house to absorb them. After a week of feeding it dozens of trees daily, plus whatever remained from the boat, my core showed no signs of being full, and the valley looked stripped. I felt uneasy about the ecological damage. Eventually, even Mahya agreed that maybe we had cut down enough.

  One ued be of all the cutting was that trag dows for crystal harvesting became much easier.

  “You have a lot of crystals, don’t you?” Mahya asked.

  “Yes. I didn’t t, but I’m sure there are more than a hundred.” I handed her a fist full of crystals. “Here.”

  “You have to teach me that spell.”

  “Let’s do it now,” I suggested.

  “Sometime soon. I want to try something first,” Mahya said, holding up a crystal and iing it.

  “What?”

  “The crystals are pressed mana. So, I thought I’d try feeding the core with crystals. Maybe it will grow,” Mahya expined, waggling her eyebrows with a mischievous grin.

  “Hm, I hadn’t thought of that. Good idea. We don’t currently have a defined use for the crystals, so let’s give it a shot,” I agreed, gesturing toward the boat.

  We pced a single crystal on the magic circle, watg ily as the core absorbed it seamlessly. , we stacked five crystals together ahem to the core. It absorbed those effortlessly as well. We tried twenty crystals at once, and once again, the core absorbed them without issue.

  Turns out pressed mana isn’t wood.

  We fed it all the crystals. It was unbelievable. I had over three hundred—I didn’t recall killing that many cats. The core had grown almost half a timeter. Mahya and I shared a triumphant high-five before moving on to teag her the spell.

  I mana darted a cat and took trol of Mahya’s mana, trying to direct it into the spell’s pattern. Immediately, it arent it would be impossible.

  “It’s not going to work,” I said, my frustration clear. “The pattern is too plex. It’s almost like the magic circle with the magic script and runes. It’s impossible to direeone’s mana into it.”

  Mahya’s shoulders slumped in disappoi. “So, what now?”

  “I’m not going tain,” I replied. “There’s no way it will work.”

  Mahya sighed. “Well, that’s a bummer.”

  “I’ll look for a different solution,” I promised.

  That evening, I made a big, fancy meal to celebrate pleting all our tasks. We were ready to leave the valley, and I couldn’t wait. Al wasn’t back yet, but we inteo track him down oh and drag him bais to tinue our journey.