Somehow, I had a feeling that my list of things I wanted to figure out would never get any smaller. Instead, it would always continue to grow, until the list was so expansive and vast, it started to generate its own gravity and ignited into a star. But even that wouldn’t actually allow me to work through it, no, even that stellar list would only continue to expand as I learned more and more, following the old adage that I could barely comprehend my own ignorance. until finally, the list to end all lists and knowledge would collapse into a black hole, sucking in all information of the Universe before devouring the Astral River itself. Only then could understanding rise from a singularity of infinite mass, energy and information, bringing a new reality into existence in a big bang, while everything before would be referred to as the great foreplay. Alas, it would take some time to reach that state.

For now, I had to be content in the knowledge that, while I found more and more things I had yet to learn about and understand, I also occasionally ticked off things from my list as the unknown became known and the veil of ignorance was pushed back just a little further.

Sadly, this was not the case here. Instead, i had come across something I didn’t understand and could only vaguely relate to things I currently understood, though at least those things I understood were part of a topic I was actually fairly good at. In other words, studying the place where we had emerged from the Dungeon and entered the cave was a fascinating puzzle. While I was completely unable to make sense of the entire thing, I could glimpse some tiny parts of the whole and relate them to my own Darkness Magic.

Sure, there were massive differences between the Realm of Shadows and the Dungeon and whatever dimension or spatial pocket it resided in but there were similarities. Here, in this cave, I could detect a few spaces where the Darkness between particles was disturbed, a little wider than it should be and I could even faintly sense that disruption fading away. Trying to understand what was happening didn’t sound too promising but I could use my observations and the understanding I gained while pushing and prodding these disruptions to further my understanding of the void between particles and, through that, my Darkness Magic.

Curiously, as I was pushing and prodding things, I realised that the process was somewhat resembling troubles I had with my Shadow Bags and began to push and prod one of those, an empty one of course, working to further my understanding and make things more stable. It was quite infuriating to lose a few days' worth of rations because one of the bags didn’t work as intended, though luckily that had only happened once so far. Still, one time was one time too many, especially when we already had limited resources and it was doubtful that getting additional resources would be easy.

Even now, our supplies were somewhat stretched, only sufficient because we could supplement our food by hunting and foraging, but even with those measures, there were things we couldn’t replenish. My tea, for one, would soon be gone and while a nice cup of hot tea was an indulgence, one of the few I allowed me, it was one I loathed to give up. But sadly, there’d soon be no choice, the tea would run out and, unlike the British in bygone days, I couldn’t just sail to India to get more tea. Once it was gone, I could only try looking for additional stashes from before the Change or I would have to accept that there would be no more tea. The thought sent a shiver of displeasure down my spine and served to focus my mind further on my attempt at making a better Shadow Bag, if only to keep what tea I might be able to find and secure safely stored until it was time to sacrifice the leaves in a bath of boiling water.

“For the tea,” I heard a voice quietly mutter and only after a moment, I realised that the voice had been mine, a subconscious utterance as my conscious mind was completely focused on the creation of a new and improved Shadow Bag. No longer was I content to let an ordinary bag hang within the realm of Shadows, connected to the physical world by a thread made from my own hair, infused with my Blood and Magic, no, I wanted something a little more stable. So, with the aftermath of the collapse of an opening into the open, physical world right in front of me, I began to design something better.

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The idea that a Dungeon could, at least to my understanding, exist outside of our physical world yet remain part of it was a fascinating realisation, especially as I also noticed just how decoupled the Dungeon had been. I had a feeling that my inability to feel the earth and stone around the Dungeon had less to do with my abilities and affinities and a lot more with a simple lack of earth and stone around it. It was as if the pocket reality the Dungeon resided in, the Instance of it to use the system’s term, only contained the Dungeon, with inviolable walls to keep the physical world contained in that bubble.

If that hypothesis was correct, I was quite glad that I hadn’t been able to alter the Dungeon’s walls in any way, I wasn’t sure what a lack of physical world would look like, what raw reality, or even the lack of raw reality, would look like, but I doubted my mind was prepared to see that. The Cthulu Mythos came to mind and what happened to people who saw more than their minds could comprehend, not something I wanted to emulate just yet.

But, with that concept as the base and the remnants of it as an example, I was trying to get a small, contained pocket of shadows within the bag, so that the internal size of it would effectively be a lot bigger than the external size suggested. If I managed to create that pocket as I currently hoped I could, it would also negate the weight while making it impossible for any outside influence to get access to the goods stored within, unless they used the bag’s opening.

I wasn’t certain whether I’d be able to negate the need for a user to have Darkness Magic and an understanding of the shadows alongside working knowledge of how I had created the bag but that was quite alright with me. If only Lia understood how the thing worked it would be quite secure, though I was planning to teach Luna that particular trick, even if she couldn’t access the Shadows in any meaningful way.

And so, I was slowly stretching and stitching the Darkness within the bag into a coherent whole, using processes quite similar to those I had employed while preparing the cloth for my Cloak, only that I didn’t have the Void Crystal from the Dungeon to use as a core but was instead using Runes stitched into the fabric using my hair as thread. Hair that was, again, soaked in Blood infused with Darkness Magic, it looked like I wasn’t able to get away from that particular trick, simply because of its convenience. Otherwise, I’d have to find some other material attuned to Darkness and my own Astral Power to work with, something I considered fairly difficult, if only because I needed it to be attuned to myself. So, my own body parts had to suffice, luckily it wasn’t anything that wouldn’t regrow eventually. It would be a lot worse if my enchantments needed bone or teeth, having to use my own would be incredibly awkward and annoying. No, Blood and Hair was quite alright in that regard.

I had no idea how long the process of stretching and stitching ultimately took, the world had long since faded away from my awareness, my focus completely consumed by that simple, repetitive process. Strangely, the longer I was working, the easier it became as it the Shadow within the bag started to actually coalesce into the shape I wanted it to be instead of me having to pull it away from a greater whole, or maybe I was imagining things and I simply was getting used to the process.

Either way, eventually I was done with the process and held a completed and completely new Shadow Bag in my hands. The moment I did, I could let myself relax and sink against the backrest of my seat, mental exhaustion battering against my mind. Creating the bag had been a chore and a half but it was done and a quick glance at my notifications showed me that it had been well worth it.

A point in Darkness Magic and Darkness Rune Mastery, two points in Astral Meditation and, most importantly, three points in Enchanting, bringing the four skills to sixty-three, fifty-eight, forty-four and twenty-seven. An excellent result for an afternoon of hard work and research. Now, we only had to fill the bag with supplies and we’d be golden.