Dylan once again walked his father through his Tutorial journey. This time, only focusing on the incidents that involved or reminded him of the mana patterns. And the more he talked, the more he realized just how deeply those patterns were interwoven with his experiences.

The streams of mana around the Awakening Stone had felt reminiscent of the patterns he’d first noticed in the sky. When he’d chosen a random class, the additional streams that had run through him had felt the same, and once he’d had an opportunity to more closely examine the stream representing his own class, he’d found it was, indeed, composed of mana patterns.

Maybe those streams are a more advanced application of the patterns.

Although not as complex as the other instances he’d seen, the patterns had also appeared as his card catalog and starter deck had been digitized when he’d first equipped them.

Not to mention the fact that the way his cards moved around him when he summoned his deck seemed to mirror a rudimentary form of the patterns. He’d been too focused on fighting and staying alive the last few times he’d called forth his cards; the feeling their movements had given him had fallen to the back of his mind in lieu of what he’d wanted to use them for in the moment.

Looking back at everything, Dylan realized he’d been surrounded by the patterns and their echoes from the moment he’d first seen them.

Being teleported to the dungeon.

The feeling of the hum disrupting his meditation during the noncombat class trials.

Sara’s exit.

The big wave of patterns washing over the cavern in the final moments of the last boss fight.

The ultimate destruction of the dungeon and being forced into mana exhaustion by observing one of the patterns doing it.

Finally, Dylan lowered his head to avoid his father’s eyes and explained how he’d let that destruction be the inspiration for his impulsive decision to make a card. And the consequences that had followed.

Dylan laid out everything. His father listened, not asking any questions until the end.

“And so, to make sure that I was in my best possible condition when coming back, I closed my eyes and didn’t check if the patterns would surround me again.” Dylan’s quiet voice filled the room. “Honestly, I don’t know if they would have. I didn’t notice anything when I first entered the Tutorial. Also, when Sara left, I saw patterns around her, but didn’t notice them for anyone else.” He thought for a moment. “I don’t understand the rules here.”

A silence followed the words.

“Are you done now? Is that everything?” His father’s voice was rougher than Dylan was used to hearing. He looked up and didn’t quite know how to read the emotions in the man’s eyes. Worry, fear, sadness. Relief restraining anger. Joy?

“That’s everything.” Dylan nodded.

His father drummed his knuckles on the table. The rapping sound echoing across the room for what felt like minutes, but Dylan knew it must have been less than twenty seconds.

“Okay,” the drumming stopped, “first of all, what the hell were you thinking?” The man’s voice rose with every word. “Sticking your arm in the middle of an area where everything had just been disintegrated? Trying to mess with the power that did it right after you’d already been drained by looking at it? How stupid—” His father stopped the words with an explosive huff of air, palm slapping the table. The short piles of cards on the wooden surface jostled with the force of the impact. After taking a few deep breaths, a calmer voice continued, “You know better.”

Dylan hunched his shoulders and looked at his hands. He wanted to argue, to say that everything had worked out. He wanted to say that the patterns were valuable and worth pursuing. But he didn’t. He knew that’d he’d been reckless. He might be able to convince his father of everything he believed about the importance and power of the patterns, but he knew he’d never convince the man that his actions had been right. “Sorry,” was all he managed to whisper.

The sound of a chair scraping across the floor sounded in the quiet room. Dylan heard his father stand and walk around the table before feeling a rough hand land on his shoulder.

“Look at me.” Dylan did. His father’s eyes still held that same complex mix of emotions, only, a sliver of helplessness now seemed to swim through it all. “Our world is full of dangers. We couldn’t avoid them all even if we wanted to. But we don’t want to. Danger can be a great opportunity for growth. But that doesn’t mean we blindly rush into its open arms. We have to be smarter than that if we want to survive. You have to be smarter than that.” The man sighed. “I thought that you would be. You’ve always been the kind of kid to be in your own head about everything.” The hand on Dylan’s should gently tightened. “I never thought I’d have to worry about you suddenly taking after your uncle.”

Dylan couldn’t suppress snorting out a small laugh at the mention of his uncle and earned a light smack across the back of his head.

“Now,” his father said, walking back to retake his seat, “I have some questions.”

Dylan nodded.

“You said no one else could see these patterns?”

Dylan nodded again.

“Show me the card.”

Dylan took the last card from his catalog. The DESTROY card. Black surface, its brand not an image visible to the naked eye but a mana imprint of the pattern the card represented. Dylan ignored the slight pain it sent shooting through his head. It felt easier to do than before. Is it because I’ve had time to rest? Dylan wondered, passing the card to his father.

The man immediately noticed the difference between DESTROY and the other cards on the table. He turned it back and forth, examining its every inch. Dylan couldn’t see any signs of discomfort in his father’s handling of the card.

I guess I’m still the only one affected.

“Well, it’s not like I didn’t expect this after hearing everything, but I’ve got nothing.” The man handed the card back across the table. “Put it away.”

Dylan did, closing the card catalog and resting his arms on its surface.

“From what you’ve said, the patterns you’ve been seeing seem to be everywhere, but you’ve noticed them most often when dealing with direct System functions. Knowing that, you need to be careful not to be caught off guard in the future. If you’re exploring a dungeon or participating in a Boon War, make sure you don’t let anyone or anything take advantage of you because you’re distracted or weakened by some floating gibberish.”

“It’s not really gibberish,” Dylan objected.

“I know,” his father leaned back and sighed, “I’m just venting where I can.”

“Venting by calling complex forces we don’t understand gibberish. Now you’re the one who sounds like Uncle Jack.”

A foot reached out and kicked Dylan under the table.

“Proving my point,” Dylan said, rubbing his calf.

“Anyway,” his father continued, “make sure to be careful whenever you expect these patterns might appear.”

Dylan nodded.

“I’ve still got some things I want to ask, but I’ll let them sit with me for a bit first. The real question is where we go from here, and to know that, we need more information.” After tapping the table a few times with his fingers, his father continued, “I think our best bet is to ask your brother if he can find anything at the Academy. That place has one of the largest collections of knowledge in the Republic.”

“Won’t that affect his studies?” Dylan asked. He didn’t want to be a burden on Eric. “Is there anyone else we could ask?”

“He’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m expecting him to put everything else aside for this. Just look around a bit in his free time. This isn’t a short-term project, after all.” His father’s lips tightened, a sign the man was seriously thinking about something. “I’m not sure we should ask anyone else for help with this.”

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“Why?”

His father sighed. “I may not be the most educated person in the world, but I’m not ignorant either. Your uncle and I traveled quite a bit before I decided to return home and settle down. And you know how Jack likes to poke his nose into everything. These patterns are completely foreign to me. Considering how powerful they seem, that tells me that knowledge about them is either incredibly rare or reserved for the privileged.” The man’s gaze moved to meet Dylan’s. “You said that Chester kid couldn’t see the patterns?”

“Right.”

“Did he seem to recognize what they might be?”

Dylan thought back and came up blank. “I don’t think so? I was a little out of it when I mentioned them, but he didn’t sound like he knew what they were.”

The older man nodded. “Then I think it’s best if we keep the patterns a secret.”

Dylan tilted his head a little, wondering why Chester had suddenly come up and what he had to do with the decision about the patterns.

Seeing his confusion, his father said. “The kid’s obviously got some kind of background. Knew about this whole world advancement thing and had at least heard about missing dungeon cores. Both of those are new to me. If even he doesn’t know about the mana patterns, information should be scarce.”

“Shouldn’t that mean we need more help rather than less?”

Dylan’s father began to rap his knuckles against the table again. “You’re too sheltered.” The drumming continued. “People do crazy things for power. They always have, but that’s been especially true after the world changed in the Awakening. You don’t see it so much in a place as small and out of the way as Fairbasin, but the pursuit of power makes seemingly rational people ruthless. Anything that can give someone an advantage, or even an opportunity to gain one, will be coveted. And anything that’s coveted will be fought for.”

“I know that,” Dylan said.

“You don’t.” His father shook his head before pointing to his temple. “You may think you know, but you don’t. Not until you’ve experienced it for yourself. There’s no doubt in my mind that these mana patterns represent an advantage.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “That you represent an advantage. If we don’t handle the situation carefully, we may be placing you in danger.”

Dylan felt a small pit forming in his stomach.

“I don’t want to scare you; I just want to prevent you from charging headfirst into any more destructive voids.”

“I didn’t—” The words stopped with a look from his father.

“You did.” The man knocked on the table one more time. “I’ll send messages to Eric and Jack when I get a chance, but otherwise, it’s on us to figure this whole thing out.” Dylan’s watched his father stretch his knuckles. “Actually, it might not be a bad idea for you to try and join your brother in the capital in the fall. You’d have better access to the information you need, and if the news about the world changing again is true, things will probably be safer there than out here in the middle of the wild.”

“Do you think I could really get in? ANA is the best school in the country. Eric’s only there because of his class.”

“Your class doesn’t lose to his. From what I can tell, with enough time and preparation, you’ll be able to fill any role you want. That’s plenty for them to consider you eligible to apply. Besides, ANA isn’t the only school in the capital. You shouldn’t have any problems.”

Dylan started feeling happy about his father’s evaluation, but then, he hesitated. “It’s true that my class is special, but is that the kind of thing that will put me in danger? After all, my class mechanics seem more connected to the System than most others that I’ve heard about. Shouldn’t that be the kind of advantage you were talking about?”

“You don’t need to worry too much about that. You’re not the only one with a special class; and a special class isn’t the same kind of opportunity as finding a way to access an entirely new form of power.”

Dylan nodded, realizing he’d been thinking too much.

“Besides, it’s not like you’ll be expected to reveal every little thing you can do. Every one of us who’s serious about advancing through the tiers will gain our own secrets as we grow. We’re all more than what we show on the surface.”

“Good.” Dylan smiled.

“That’s all in the future, though. For now, you need to focus on getting stronger and becoming more comfortable with your new class. I can tell you want to learn more about the patterns, but try not to think about them until we have more information to work with.” His father paused. “And whatever you do, never try making another card based on one of them again.”

“But—”

“No!” His father interrupted. “It almost killed you! You said it would have if you hadn’t had the help of the mana in the core room. You also said that you didn’t have any control over the creation process after it’d started. It’s too dangerous.” The stern voice stopped for a moment before emphasizing each of its next four words. “Don’t do it again.”

Dylan had wanted to say that he should be able to try making cards based on the patterns again after getting stronger; he wasn’t stupid enough to do it again anytime soon. But despite his father’s relatively calm appearance, he was obviously still affected from hearing how Dylan had almost died. Making a card with a mana pattern had nearly killed his son, so making that kind of card was forbidden.

A stifled feeling rose in Dylan’s chest, but he pushed it down. His father was already going to help him learn more about the patterns. He wasn’t barred from studying them; he was barred from doing something that had endangered his life. He could still pursue the patterns in other ways.

Maybe once we know more, once we have some distance from this incident, and maybe once I’m stronger, Dylan thought, he’ll let me try again.

“Understood. I won’t do it again.”

“Sorry for yelling.”

“It’s okay. I know you’re just worried.” The room fell quiet, but then Dylan suddenly looked up. “I just remembered; didn’t you say you’d tell me something after I was done talking about the dungeon?”

“What?” His father looked genuinely confused.

“When I was talking about the Tutorial the first time, you got this grumpy expression on your face and when I asked you what was wrong, you said, ‘Nothing. I’ll tell you at the end.’” Dylan did his best to imitate the older man’s deep voice, and his father gave him a look telling him to stop being stupid.

“Right. It doesn’t seem so important now, but I was just thinking that your dungeon seemed harder than they usually are.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The Tutorial is supposed to push you, but there were a few times during your story when I felt like you were walking through a death trap.” The man paused for a moment. “That dungeon may be fine for people with more stats and experience, but you and your group had just been initiated by the System. Things like giant swaths of the floor collapsing and double bosses feel a bit like overkill.”

“I guess I didn’t really think about it,” Dylan said, but reflecting on it now, there were definitely a few things in the dungeon that had felt more extreme than he’d expected. In addition to what his father had already noted, the number of monsters that had been in the second section of the dungeon, the mad rush of exploding spiders after the shaman had died, and the sheer physical presence of the spider boss all came to mind. “Do you know why it was like that?” Dylan thought of the biggest anomaly he’d encountered in the dungeon. “Do you think it had anything to do with the missing core?”

“Doubt it. The core didn’t go missing until the very end.”

“How do you know that?”

“Think about it carefully. What happened at the end of that final fight?”

“What happened,” Dylan muttered, walking his mind through the fight again.

Details about the battle had always felt a bit hazy to him at the end. The way he’d struggled to hold the two bosses in place had left him with little consideration for anything else. He’d concentrated on his task and trusted his teammates to deal with the rest. Ultimately, he’d used Phantom Rally and ordered his archer to fire one last shot before he’d collapsed under the effects of mana exhaustion.

“Start with the mana patterns you told me about,” his father prompted, “and then the monsters running away.”

Dylan remembered the wave of patterns washing across the room, the ground shaking, and all the smaller monsters fleeing. No, that wasn’t quite right. The shaking had come first, then the patterns, and then the monsters had scattered. Next, the boss had died and the System had warned that the core was gone. Right?

He’d assumed the core had always been gone, and with the last section cleared, the core room had opened, causing the dungeon to begin collapsing rather than follow its normal procedures. But thinking about it now, there was no real reason to believe that things had actually happened that way. He’d just been led to think that because of the timing of the boss dying and the System’s announcement. His, at the time, scrambled brain had never thought anything else.

But maybe that wasn’t the truth.

He’d assumed the boss had died as it’d fell; he’d assumed that its death had triggered the announcement about the missing core, but now, he wasn’t sure. The mana exhaustion had made it impossible to have a clear recollection of those moments, and even if the timing had lined up, that wasn’t necessarily proof of his earlier beliefs. It was a correlation, nothing more.

The real important information was what his father had noticed. A wave of mana patterns sweeping out away from where the core room was located. All but the two boss monsters running away from the fight. And not one of those monsters had run back toward where they’d originally come from. The direction of the core room. It was all strange.

“Are you suggesting that something happened to the core that caused the wave of mana patterns that I saw?”

Dylan’s father nodded. “It’s a theory.”

“What do you think it was?”

The man shook his head. “Hard to say. I’ve never heard of anything like it before. But in any case, the missing core didn’t increase the dungeons difficulty.”

“Until the very end,” Dylan added.

His father laughed. “Right. Until that mess at the end.”

“Then what did?”

“It’s just a guess, but I think it was the quality of your group.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I’ve heard rumors that the Tutorial dungeon can get harder if the kids it’s testing are especially skilled or have rare classes.” The man looked up in thought. “Your group probably checked both boxes. I wasn’t there, so it’s hard to judge everyone, but from what you’ve told me, your Guardian, Blade Warden, and Runic Scribe were all very good at what they did. Then, on top of how rare their classes were, you’ve got your own class and a Bard variant I’ve never seen before.” His father paused. “Oh, and that Lord who quit at the beginning. Dungeon probably bumped up the difficulty for him too.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“But like I said, it doesn’t seem that important anymore.” Dylan’s father stood and stretched. “It’s all over now. What matters is what you do next.”

“Any suggestions?”

“Training. The town’s put aside one of the intact training fields for you kids to practice and get used to the changes you just went through.” The man started clearing the table, handing the cards he’d filled it with back to Dylan. “Take advantage of it. There should be an announcement coming down in another day or so about gathering you all to assess where you can best help the town’s defense.”

As Dylan returned the cards to the catalog, he asked, “Help how?”

“Depends on what each of you can do. They’ve already got that kid, Miles, on manatech repairs. Can’t do much with the advanced stuff, but with just how much of the basic shit got damaged, he won’t run out of anything to do for a while.”

“What about me?”

“It’s hard to say. You and the others capable of combat will probably be put in support and logistics roles near the wall.”

“So, not actually fighting?”

His father laughed. “You might see some combat, but if we really had to depend on you newborns for the fight, the town’s already doomed.”