Mark woke up the next day and was surprised to note that he woke up earlier than the twins. They did sleep late last night, and the kids were active until Mark had to put his foot down and told the kids that it was time to sleep.
He could smell the breakfast Milena cooked and when he went outside his bedroom, the food was already on the table and Nedertu was there waiting. After a few minutes, the smell woke up the twins and they bounced out of their room and sat on the table.
While they were eating breakfast, Mark asked Nedertu some questions regarding their dive later.
“What time are you planning to dive and how does it work? Are there queues and do you leave your names at the guard at the entrance? Are there any guards in the dungeon entrance or a toll booth?”
“We’ll enter the dungeon at around nine in the morning so a couple of hours from now and the dungeon does have guards and we do leave our names at the entrance. We also pay an entrance fee.”
“What type of monsters will you encounter?”
“The first twelve floors will be sea or water monsters like sahuagins and mermen, the next twelve floors will be forest monsters like wereanimals, dire wolves, and kobolds, and the last twelve floors will be undead. The very last floor, which is the thirty-seventh floor will be the monster leader and it could be the leader of the water monsters, the leader of the forest monster, or the leader of the undead monsters.”
“How many floors can your group tackle before we leave the village?”
“At our strength, we could finish one floor a day and this is a closed dungeon meaning we will not be able to leave until we destroy the very last monsters on the floor.”
Mark was startled to hear that rule and was glad that his dungeon was not like that and that he could leave anytime he wanted and just continue the next day.
“That’s too bad. I was planning to join you to check it out. Of course, I’m not going to fight just observe but if you have to kill all of the monsters before I can leave that means that I will not be able to leave anytime I want.”
“Can we join the dungeon group?” Isaac asked.
“Of course not, you will need to be at least sixteen before you can dive into the dungeon,” Milena said.
“We’re not going to fight, we’ll just take a look and let Mark fight while we watch. We’ll eat snacks while Mark casts spells to kill the monsters,” Aaron said.
“Ooh, can we do that? I’m sure I can protect the twins and we can stay inside a sanctuary spell while my summons kills the monsters,” Mark excitedly said.
“No, the guard at the entrance of the dungeon will not allow children to go through,” Milena said firmly.
“You heard her kids, we’ll not be able to go to the dungeon for now,” Mark told the twins.
The twins pouted and continued eating their breakfast.
“What are we going to sell later?” Milena asked while eating.
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“I don’t want to sell candies and donuts anymore. What about pizzas? I do have diverse types of pizzas and we can sell it by the slice or by box,” Mark asked.
“Pizza’s nice and we can eat it while we sell,” Isaac asked while Aaron yelled “Pizza! Pizza!”
“Pizza’s nice and then tomorrow it will be something else. Our stall will be known as the stall that doesn’t sell anything twice!” Milena said.
After breakfast, Mark wrote down the pizza flavors that they would sell later that afternoon so Milena could create signboards with pizza descriptions and prices. He told their cook that she would be in charge of pricing the pizzas but requested that it should be cheap enough that children from the village could afford to purchase it.
“We’ll just price the slices of pizza the same as the donuts yesterday and a box of pizza will be the price of one slice multiplied by eight,” Milena said.
“Okay. We’ll start selling once I’m back which will be around four or five in the afternoon.”
The twins then ran outside followed by Milena and Nedertu said his goodbyes as well saying that he needed to prepare for their group’s dive later.
Before entering his dungeon, Mark wanted to roam the circus once to check everything. He first went to where the acrobat brothers set up their act. Dozon, Kozon, and Rozon were still setting up their show tent and he saw that they had additional people with them. Upon closer look, the additional people were teenagers.
“Mark, you’re here! Are you planning to join us again?” Dozon asked when the acrobat leader saw Mark.
“Unfortunately, I’m quite busy with studying magic these days. You have more people. Are they your new apprentices?”
“Yes. When the kids turned sixteen, they had the option of apprenticing to the acts they wanted to pursue. But mostly, they wanted to learn weapon work from us,” Dozon whispered.
Mark nodded to say that he understood. Basically, it meant that the circus children would learn the secret expertise of the people in the circus. The acrobat brothers were expert rogues. The elven sisters were mages and archers, Norunta was a healer mage, Lorendo the Magician was a powerful mage, the dwarves were powerful warriors, the halflings were powerful rogues and thieves, and so on.
“So, are they doing fine?”
“It’s too early to tell,” Dozon said loudly which was heard by the apprentices.
Mark could see that the statement made them nervous which made Dozon, Rozon, and Kozon laugh. He said his goodbyes to the acrobat brothers, and he went back to roaming the circus. He arrived at the tent that the actors set up for their plays and saw Linuel the director instructing the actors. Contrary to his expectations, the actors were very lively and active.
“Mark, are you planning to watch our latest play? It’s one of the new plays that we wrote after we got inspired by watching the movie The Princess Bride. The story is different, so you don’t need to worry that we copied it.” Linuel said when he saw Mark.
“You don’t need to worry about me. Even if you copy the movies word for word it doesn’t matter to me. Are you and your actors affected by the movies?”
“Are you worried that we’re earning less? Yes, we’re earning less but the earnings that we all got from the movie theater are so much that we’re actually earning more now and since we don’t have to worry about coins, we focus on the art more which was making our plays more exciting and our actors becoming experts. Everyone received inspiration from the movies that we’ve seen and we’re learning a lot so we’re actually thankful.”
“I’m glad. You know since I’m still worried let me pay you all back by showing you movies that earned a lot of accolades from our critics and reviewers. In my land, we have what we call award bodies that celebrate the best of the best in movies every year. One of our most prestigious and respected award-giving bodies is called the Oscars and once you receive an Oscar award for being the best actor of the year or being part of the best movie of the year or best screenplay, best actress, best supporting actress, and actor, best special effect, best music and so on, your reputation will soar to the sky and your name would resound in the land.”
Linuel was fascinated by what Mark was saying and all of the actors gathered when they heard what he was saying about being the best of the best.
“Does that mean that if a person won the best director, his name would remain in the annals of movie-making history,” Linuel said with a shaking voice.
Mark was amazed at how easily Linuel understood the concept of award-giving bodies.