While Nate had been working on the new dungeon, Aura had been working on the second-floor traps of the ant dungeon. That dungeon was the bane of their existence. The hard shells simply deflected most attacks, and they had been struggling to get anything to work against the giant insects. The second floor at the moment was barely even slowing them down. Due to the nature of the odd dungeon, they couldn’t pull the same tricks he had with the first dungeon.

  Yet another reason why he hated that particular dungeon and was more than happy to let Aura take over.

  ***

  The Dungeon Core in Busan, South Korea, finished construction at noon while they were on the road. They had returned to Trinidad early with one of the filled trailers the night before. Landon had been sad to see his sister go, but understood that this was always meant to be nothing more than a short stop.

  With the Dungeon Core now in place, and the dungeon, at least in its most basic form, now existed over there as well. As such, just like what had happened with the floating jellyfish, he could now see what sort of monsters or creatures were coming through that particular portal.

  The answer, in this case, was flaming dogs.

  Nate wasn’t too familiar with South Korean mythology, but he was fairly certain that fire dogs did exist in one of them. Actually, so did nine-tailed foxes, he thought with a wry grin. Places were weird like that.

  Regardless, he was acting as navigator at the moment, so there was nothing he could do about the new dungeon.

  Angie swerved around a large pothole, taking her foot off the accelerator for the moment. She took the opportunity to turn down the music playing in the front section of the RV.

  “Now that Anna is gone, are you going to tell us where our first stop actually is?”

  He rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t hiding it because of her. I’m honestly not sure where it is. I know there is something near the Cochiti Lake area of Santa Fe, but I’ve never been able to identify what exactly it is.”

  Lindsay hung her head over the back of the couch to stare at him while she petted Aura. “Speaking of which. You never explained how exactly you even know about these other spots. You and Aura knowing about the dungeons makes some sense. It’s weird, but you’re an odd dude. You keep saying that these locations aren’t dungeons or even regular dimensional zones. So, how do you know about them?”

  Nate put on his best mystical look and stared up at the ceiling. “The stars and my feelings are guiding me.” He let that linger in the air for a couple of seconds before breaking out in a chuckle. “Sorry, that one is just going to have to remain a mystery for now.”

  “Whatever. If we push it, we can probably get most of the way there today. Santa Fe is about two hundred miles from Trinidad, and this lake looks like it will add another twenty-ish miles on top of that.” Lindsay told them after grabbing the map from him.

  He took it back with a pointed look at where he was sitting in the navigator’s chair. “It would be nice if we could cover that much distance, but we need to be careful. I’m not exactly keen on the idea of us all getting stranded out here because we broke the vehicle by pushing it too hard.”

  Aura spent most of the day inside his chest and working on several of the second floors of the dungeons. Trying to eke out whatever small amount of increase she could in the traps.

  Nate had been keeping an eye on the various research projects each core was running at the time. Some were useful, most weren’t, or simply helped to decrease the ongoing cost of everything. It was a constant game of optimization, either toward damage or how much energy and resources the trap used.

  Nate was busy taking notes on his laptop when Angie slammed on the brakes, jerking him against his seatbelt.

  The road had been completely washed out ahead of them.

  A small ravine had been created that bisected the road. It was only around five feet wide and about the same deep. However, to get around it would require them to drive off-road in either direction for at least a mile or two.

  Or they could take the easier route.

  “Everybody out,” Nate said, preparing to store the RV inside his storage.

  It was something he had discovered he could do during the cleanup of the city. As long as he was touching the object with the ethereal screen of the wrist computer, then he would be able to store it. During that time, he had used that method to store and transfer the crumpled remains of dozens of vehicles and several tons of concrete blocks. Doing the RV would be a piece of cake.

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  A couple of minutes later, they had hopped over the small gulch. He brought out the vehicle, and they were on their way again. For most groups, it would have spelled the beginning of a long detour, while for them, it was nothing more than an annoying speed bump in the way.

  They stopped a half hour outside of Santa Fe and set up camp for the night. Nate did more work on the new dungeons, and then some training runs with Aura.

  The next day, they made it to the lake.

  Lindsay hopped out of the RV and stretched her arms over her head with a groan of pleasure, despite having only been on the road for a few hours. “Are you sure there is something here, Nate? I see a few monsters on the far side of the lake, but other than that, it actually looks rather pleasant.”

  Angie did her own stretches and nodded along with her friend’s declaration. “I have to agree with her. I feel a slight increase in qi, but that is it. There doesn’t seem to be a portal or a dimensional zone.”

  Aura dove into the lake and began paddling about, her tails fanning out behind her. “Well, isn’t that the entire reason why we are here? Because whatever he detected was different from the normal sites.”

  Nate shrugged; he was as lost as the others now that he was here. “She’s not wrong. I know there is something here, but not what it is, or where it might be.”

  The easy answer was that he could have simply tried to create a Dungeon Core at this location and been done with it. However, if it had wasted one of his currently limited cores on something that wouldn’t bring him anything, that was something he couldn’t afford at the moment. Which was why he needed to investigate what these mysterious items were the hard way.

  It took them hours of searching the area and multiple fights to finally find what Nate had known was there.

  It turned out to be located in the gap between some large boulders. Aura was the one who found it, detecting the increase in qi coming from the area.

  “What is it?” Angelica asked as they all leaned in close and studied it.

  “I think… that it’s a dimensional zone that didn’t fully form,” Lindsay muttered.

  Nate nodded in agreement. Picking up a nearby rock, he tossed it at the small flickering crack in the air. He got lucky, and the rock hit the crack at just the right time, vanishing from the Earth.

  “So, it’s unstable, and not fully formed… but still somewhat active,” He supplied.

  “That would seem to be the case,” Aura agreed. “I wonder where it goes though, an established world, or a new location? More than that, I’m curious as to where these sorts of items are normal, or if they are an oddity of your world?”

  “You’ve never heard of anything like them in your world?” Lindsay asked, poking a stick through the crack. The end was sheared clean off as soon as it flickered, resulting in them all taking a cautious step back. None of them wanted to accidentally lose a finger to the unstable crack in space.

  “No, but it has been a very, very long time since my planet went through what yours is going through. It is possible that they may have existed at one time.” Aura looked around at the lake. “This area doesn’t look like much of a dimensional zone, but there are a few signs now that I am looking closer. Perhaps it started out slightly stronger and has been gradually getting weaker?”

  “Is that even a thing?” Angie asked her.

  “With normal portals and dimensional zones, no. With one that isn’t fully formed, and is so weak… perhaps?” Aura replied with a shrug.

  In other words, they were dealing with a completely unknown item.

  “Alright,” Nate decided after they had been staring at it for a while. “We found it; my curiosity has been answered. Let’s cover it with rocks to at least hide it from view and then get back on the road.”

  If they were quick, they could make it back to the highway before night fully fell.

  Working together, they covered the crack in space, using bigger rocks as needed to hide it and pile up around the other boulders.

  Back inside the RV, Lindsay hopped behind the wheel and carefully drove them away. During her time shuttling people to and from the wall in defense of the city, she had come to enjoy driving at least a little. Then later on she had operated a few of the semi-dump trucks and her driving proficiency had grown. Now she was definitely the best driver among the three of them, with Nate trailing somewhere behind her and Angie behind them both.

  Not that any cultivator could truly be bad at driving with their enhanced reflexes.

  While she drove, Nate took a few vegetable ingredients out of his storage and some meat out of the fridge and began preparing their dinner. His mother had made sure that if they were going to do this, then he would need to learn how to cook properly. She wasn’t going to let him live off of frozen pizzas and pre-bought meals the entire time. Which was something that was entirely possible for him due to his storage space. With that around, he could have gone around to every single restaurant and loaded up on meals. Nate had still done that, but those were for emergencies now, instead of being for everyday consumption.

  Surprisingly, at least in his opinion, Aura had turned into quite the helpful assistant chef. With how sensitive her nose and tongue were, among her other senses, it made seasoning anything perfectly a breeze for her. Well, it would have if she had possessed hands. Nate still had to act as hers in those instances.

  By the time Lindsay pulled over, dinner was ready. Angie took an extra minute to mark their location on the map before joining them in the back. They were stopping late today, so they would have to risk camping out on the road without clearing the area first.

  “How many of those barely formed cracks do you think there are?” Angie asked as they all sat down around the table.

  “A lot,” Nate said as he began dishing up their dinner. “This wasn’t the only one I’ve come across. Merely, the first one I was able to determine the location of.”

  Lindsay’s fork stopped on its way to the plate as she sighed. “Nate, you have to stop saying things like that. We are doing our best to ignore the odder things about you, and what you can do. When you say something like that though, it makes it really hard to do. We know you have secrets that you don’t want to tell anyone. We aren’t blind, but you have to work with us a little more.”

  “Right, sorry.” He murmured sadly, wondering if it was time to tell them more. They had gotten the same story as his parents, however, unlike them, it seemed they weren’t happy remaining ignorant.

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