At breakfast, Mahya said, “I think Al is right, and the ge has a dungeon.” She stirred her pe thoughtfully.

  “How? It’s so close to settlements. Surely they would have discovered it long ago,” I questioned, frowning as I set my cup down.

  “In the guild, they told me about a group of three gold badge adventurers who e once a season to clear the ge of monsters,” Mahya expined, her eyes narrowing and sounding pissed. “I think they know about the dungeon and didn’t tell ao keep the resources for themselves.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, but it makes the most sense,” she replied, shaking her head slightly. “Higher mana levels and tainted mana are the perfect ditions for a duo form. The ce that there isn’t a duhere is about five pert, and then it’s just a matter of time.”

  “So, what do you want to do?”

  “We o go deeper into the ge and check it out,” Mahya said firmly, meeting my gaze. “Luckily, it’s long and narrow, so we won’t have to search. If we keep going in, at some point, we’ll enter the dungeon.”

  “And what about the adventurers? They’re a gold badge, so they will be strong. And to be ho, I’m pretty okay with fighting monsters, but I don’t want to fight people aainly not kill them,” I admitted, gng around uneasily.

  “Don’t worry,” Mahya reassured, waving her hand dismissively. “At the guild, they told me they e once a season, and the st time they were here was three or four breaths ago at the beginning of autumn.”

  “What’s a breath?” I asked, puzzled.

  “That’s what they call the ten days between days off,” Mahya replied, taking another bite of her breakfast.

  “I thought it was called a cascade,” Al chimed in, looking up from his meal.

  “That’s what they call it on the isnd. On the mainnd, they call it a breath,” Mahya expined with a shrug.

  Al and I exged a look, both of us shrugging in unison.

  “Are they sistently using this entrao the ge?” Al asked, gng over at Mahya.

  “I think so,” Mahya replied.

  "We ought to find another way into the ge as a precaution,” Al suggested, pushing his pte aside.

  “I go up with the balloon and look,” Mahya offered.

  “I have a better solution,” I interjected.

  “What solution?” Mahya asked.

  “I hover and look.”

  “I thought you had no trol over your flight,” Mahya said.

  “I have no trol over moving; the wind is not cooperating. But I go up and down without a problem.”

  “So after breakfast, you’ll find us another entrance,” Mahya cluded, nodding in agreement.

  I nodded back, and we tio eat in panionable silence.

  After we finished eating, I went outside and ected to the wind. I did it gradually to ensure everything worked here like it did in the valley, and it did. I slowly rose and looked around. There were enormous cliffs on both sides of the ge that seemed plicated to navigate. I hovered about 200 meters above the ground and looked down at the sery. There were patches of grass and moss on steep, jagged cliffs. I could see scattered rocks aation around, and some spots showed signs of erosion. Trees with yellow leaves added some color to the se. The ge looked like a bck scar running through the ndscape. I couldn’t see ihe ge, only the cliffs oher side.

  I rose further and took out my binocurs. The ge tinued several kilometers into the distan zigzags. From where we were, it tinued for perhaps ten or fifteen kilometers into the distance, but because of the zigzags, it was at least three or four times longer inside. Cliffs lined both sides and also at the end. I used my most powerful binocurs and took another look. I couldn’t see any other entry point except where we were. High cliffs surrouhe area with steep rock walls leading into the ge. Because of the darkness inside, I couldn’t accurately estimate their height, but based on what we saw from the ihe rock walls were at least eighty to a hundred meters high.

  After I got back down, I took out my stroelephoto lens, hovered again, and took some pictures. The view was so primal that I couldn’t help myself. After I nded for the sed time, I told Mahya and Al what I had seen. “Look for a pce to put the house,” Mahya said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You don’t want to meet the adventurers. Although, from what I uand, it will take them aire season to get back, we’d better not take any ces. We go down to the ge from there if you find a good pce to put the house. It took us a day to clear maybe two or three kilometers, so the rest of the ge will take time, and if we find a dungeon worth clearing multiple times, it will take even longer.”

  “And how do you want to get down to the ge? There is only orance, and it’s here.”

  “We have miles of rope for that,” she said, patting me on the back. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a solutiht now, find us a pce to put the house.”

  I hovered again and searched for a suitable spot, but couldn’t find any. After getting down, I told them, “I ’t find anything from here. We must be directly above a spot to see if it’s good. But since I ’t move, I ’t find one. We’ll he balloon for that.”

  “Before we go up in the balloon,” Mahya said, “I want to experiment with the house.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “The polluted trees at the entrance, do they have a lot of mana in them?”

  “Yeah...”

  “We should harvest ahem to the house, but tell it not to filter the polluted mana but create monsters instead. I want to see if it will work, and I think it will. You told Al a lot of things there had polluted mana, so we should monsterize and crystallize all the useful stuff.”

  “I don’t want to feed my house polluted mana. What if it gets ied or something?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s based on an experiment Lis suggested, and I trust him.”

  “He answered?” I excimed. “I checked the Archive almost every day, and there was nothing.”

  “Yeah, he answered yesterday.”

  I opehe Archive immediately and looked.

  “He added you to the correspondence,” I told Al.

  “He did?”

  “Yes, look.”

  Al opehe Archive, and a huge smile spread across his face.

  Tr. LM

  “Ior, Clueless, Hungry, Prince, Versailles.”

  Hello, my dear friends,

  Sorry for the dey in replying. Gafirebreatha and Viserrant, my dragon friends, took me to another dragon world through a Gate to visit a Magiteventor. Until this meeting, I must fess that I was thinking too small. I’m currently staying with Holnkorasun, the ior of Magitech, and we’re w together. While I teach him English and help him gh my colle of books from Earth, he teaches me dragon runes. I’m sure, knowing me, you imagine how much I’m enjoying myself, but even multiplying that tenfold wouldn’t e close to my actual level of enjoyment. It’s so amazing to be a Traveler sometimes.

  Regarding your question about the book, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I hate doing it.

  I have experieh dungeon cores. I know that with a dungeon core from a well-established dungeon with three floors, you build a magic circle that allows the core to absorb materials and expand or stres ected structure. However, it only do these two things, and there is a limit to the amount of materials it absorb. Cores ot absorb such a massive amount of materials, build a rge house, or create teological devices.

  Fortunately, when we read or write fantasy, we let our imaginations run wild and ihings that ot exist iy. If I were the author of this book—by the way, the book sounds very eaining, save it for the ime we meet—I would imagihe dungeon core with capabilities far beyond what’s possible.

  Imagine a dungeon core that could vert any absorbed material into valuable items or structures based on the master’s needs and knowledge. It’s impossible, of course, but in fantasy, you could feed the etals, pstics, fabrics, etc., and request it to produce tools, ons, ical artifacts. The core could then potentially extract mana or energy from absorbed substances and distribute it throughout the structure, ensuring everything runs smoothly.

  Picture a core with enhae capabilities, able to store vast amounts of materials and increase its capacity as it absorbs more items. Again, it’s pure fantasy, but it’s fun to think about. For example, if I had a wizard in my story who could harvest crystals, I could put the core on a vent and use it to create moo kill and vert.

  The core could seamlessly ie advaeology in a magical world, bining magid modern devices. It could craft specific items from provided materials, like ons ical artifacts, and even manipute spatial dimensions to create hidden rooms or expaing spaces.

  Imagihe core adding magical properties to items and structures, like entments or runes. You could provide the core with ented items ical materials and request it to enhance your house or other items.

  One experiment could involve tinuously feeding the core various materials to see if its ste capacity increases. Another could include inflig minor damage oructure to observe the core’s repair process and uand its ability to self-repair.

  For enviroal trol, you could instruct the core to adjust internal ditions like temperature and humidity and see how well it maintains optimal settings. For spatial manipution, you might request the creation of hidden rooms or the expansion of existing spaces, testing the core’s abilities to alter dimensions. Or even tell it to shrink the external dimensions of a structure and create all the spaces inside in an expanded spatial dimension.

  If I had an Alchemist in my story, I would have ducted experiments to test the core’s ability to facilitate the growth of potent and mana-rits and grafting new and us with desired capabilities.

  If I had a wizard in my story, I would have created an area with spatial expansion, advanced protes, and mana absorption capabilities to practice my spells.

  Fenuinely fantastic twist, if my story had an engineer dreaming of a spaceship, I would have tested the core’s abilities to create various means or methods to use alterhods of propulsion, such as mana and anti-matter drives, with adequate precautions to prevent the csh betweewo. After all, in stories, we create a world where mana and tech do not oppose each other.

  Of course, these experiments are impossible iy. But that’s the beauty of fantasy—we dream of dungeon cores capable of doiraordinary things a our imaginations soar.

  I look forward to discussing these wild ideas with you when we meet.

  And do please tell me about your adventures. I enjoy hearing about them.

  Lis, aka Ior

  “He suggested your idea of creating pocket dimensions,” I told Al, watg as he tapped his fingers on his leg in thought.

  “I saw it, and it is a logical dedu based on fual core capabilities.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. We have to test it.” I turo Mahya, who was adjusting her notes. “The suggestion with the vent is something we did with the small core; how e he doesn’t know about it?”

  She gnced up from her papers and shrugged. “We did it after I wrote him.”

  “Oh, makes sense. I hope when we feed it the polluted stuff, it doesn’t create the scary stuff we fought in the dungeon.” I felt a shiver at the memory of those monsters.

  “Not if we feed it the items one by o won’t have enough polluted mana for the really dangerous monsters,” she said, her brow furrowing as she leaned against the wall, tapping her foot thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, okay. You’re right,” I said, nodding slowly, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling.

  We returo the ge entrand spent the whole day cutting dowrees and then going in deeper to collect the other stuff ri mana. We didn’t venture past the point we cleared with the giant mushrooms. Besides the trees, some rocks were mana-rich, the strange colorful crystal petals that grew from the cliff face, the big stone mushrooms with the glowing caps that took us an hour to figure out how to collect—my mining tools turned out to be very helpful—the geometries, the glowing moss, and the metallic ferns.

  We cleared the signifit threats two days ago, but some small fry tried to attack us. Today’s fights went differently from two days ago. Of course, some of the ease was due to the smaller size of the monsters, but not only the size. Whenever moried to attack us, Al, Rue, and I would grab them with telekinesis and smash them. After the training the day before, Al and I could grab up to three monsters each, and Rue could grab two.

  If there were more mohan that, Mahya got rid of them with the rifle. The first time she saw us smashing monsters, she looked at us wide-eyed and ented, “Al told me about your training, but I didn’t believe it was that effective.”

  Whe to the giant mushrooms with the spores, Al took out a long needle, stabbed one mushroom, and licked the needle.

  “Halluoid,” he said.

  “Like a drug?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t want to feed my house halluogens,” I decred firmly.

  Al and Mahya ughed at me, shaking their heads. “Your house isn’t sapient,” Mahya said, trying to suppress a grin. “There’s no way it would get high.”

  Al chimed in, “Essentially, the core is a device that verts mana. It ot experience physical effects.”

  I crossed my arms and stood my ground. “I’m not willing to take the ce. I’m not feeding my house drugs.”

  They ughed some more at my expense, but didn’t insist.

  Iernoouro the house. I gave the core the order to open the ded started feeding the house oree at a time. I instructed it not to filter the tainted mana but to create a mohree minutes after the first tree disappeared into the deck, a serpentine figure, simir to the guardian of the sed floor in the dungeon, materialized on the deck. The only difference was that the snake in the dungeon was five meters long, while this snake was only forty timeters long. Muanageable. I smashed it with telekinesis and proceeded to feed the house.

  I kept at it until it got dark, and I had to cook dinner. During this time, I had processed maybe five pert of our collected materials. The day, I tio feed the house all day, and it showed no signs of slowing down etting full. No matter how many materials the house absorbed and filtered, it tio take in more and more. By that evening, I had fed it about eighty pert of all the materials we collected, and I had accumuted over two huiny crystals. I started bining the crystals inter oo occupy myself between killing snakes. In the evening, not including the three rge crystals we collected from the giant monsters in the ge that Mahya kept for the jeeps, we had sixteen crystals of suitable size fraving.

  Mahya wanted eight crystals for each jet ski and insisted that we needed more crystals to feed the small core in the boat and stock up for future projects. After some discussion, we decided I would stay home to tinue feeding the house and verting the crystals while she and Al would tinue colleg materials in the ge. Al could sense whits tained mana, and Mahya could sense which trees tained mana, so they only needed me for the rocks. We agreed they would collect all the materials they could, and I would do a st sweep and point out what they missed.

  That’s how we spent the hree days. They collected materials, and I fed the house and smashed snakes. At a certain point, it crossed my mind that it was very b. The mohat materialized im.

  Oops!

  It turned out I should have been careful with my thoughts. Who knew? If I got too bored, maybe the core would have created a very “eaining” moo provide me with i and an adrenaline rush. Better not.

  After they finished colleg all the materials, I did a st s of the cleared area of the ge. The only thing taining mana, besides a few rocks and stones I pointed out, was the pool of smelly water that the pims came out of. None of us wao collect water that smelled like socks an athlete wore for three weeks straight, so we devised a solutiouro the house, and I colpsed it. We returo the ge, and I threw the core into the pool with instrus to absorb all the water.

  As the water level dropped, individual pims emerged from the pool. I let Mahya and Al kill them—I had killed enough. My job was to vert them into crystals.

  Ohe pool was empty, we discovered it was nearly five meters deep. Luckily, my telekinesis level had progressed enough for me to reach the core, but the depth almost reached the limit of my ability.

  After I collected the core, Mahya said, “This time, all three of us are idiots.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Instead ing you materials to the deck, we could have gone in with the core into the ge, pced it o the materials, and told it to absorb them. It would have saved us a lot of bad forth.”

  Al and I exged a look, sighed, and I said, “You’re right. ime, we’ll do it that way.”

  When we left the ge, we decided to take a couple of days off to rest from the intense work and thehe balloon to find a new pce for the house in a less accessible area.