Nate was sitting inside the truck beside Aura as they left the old subdivision behind them. The sun was beginning to peek over the distant horizon as they began their journey back home. They had spent some time swapping out the bodies inside the trailer for those that would bring in more of a profit. A fair bit of time had also been spent on retrieving cores from everything so they wouldn’t have to do it later.

The other group was still back there, finishing up their own preparations to leave. They were packing their old-rusted, rickety trailers as full as they could. They had admitted to Nina and Niall that their usual expeditions were barely above the minimum requirements. Seeing how the three, well, four of them fought had reminded them of what they had learned so long ago when they were in school. They had already started to think about how they could change and improve their formation.

None of them were too proud to admit that the sudden influx of money from cores and bodies would help in that regard. If they were going to change the formation, then new gear would be needed as well.

Nate yawned and absentmindedly began to pet and scratch Aura behind the ears.

She had let the illusion fall as soon as they were in the truck and was back to looking normal again.

“Are you going to be able to hide yourself when we reach the city?” Nina asked Aura.

She nodded. “It wouldn’t work against other beasts, but against humans, it should be easy enough. I can disguise myself again if that is easier, or simply enter Nate.”

Nina began to nod along, before suddenly twisting her head around so quickly that her hair whipped Niall in the face. “What was that last one you mentioned? I think there might have been a translation error there. The images I was getting showed you going into his chest. That can’t be right though, that’s not how companion beast connections work. They can’t simply enter a person’s body.”

Nate held his hand out to Aura. She put her paw on it and quickly turned ephemeral and sank into his skin as she retreated for the moment.

Now that they had met in person, his body acted as a portal to the dungeons for her. However, it also acted as a safe haven of sorts. At any time when they were touching, she could sink beneath his skin and curl herself around his main core, while her tails protected his backup core.

There was undoubtedly some benefit to doing this, besides the comfort it provided her. What that was, though, neither of them knew at the moment. It was something they would need to learn together.

Nate’s mother felt her mouth drop open in surprise. “Aura… she just- just-” She tugged on Niall’s arm. “Honey, Aura just sank into Nate’s skin. Was that something companion beasts did?”

From the rearview mirror, Nate could see his father’s eyes were wide. He had seen what Aura did and was barely holding it together as he gripped the creaking steering wheel tight.

“I, uh, didn’t think so, but I admittedly also haven’t spent a lot of time around them.” Niall managed to say after several miles of silence.

The trip back to the city and its protective walls was filled with quiet conversation as they chatted about Nate’s schooling and their work. Both of them had absolutely loved their new weapons and items. The performance of each had blown them away.

Nate was glad to hear it, but by the time they had reached the walls of the city, his attention had been taken by something else. A message from the second dungeon had suddenly appeared on the ethereal touchscreen of the computer attached to his wrist.

‘Energy resource is dangerously low. All traps and extraneous systems currently inside the dungeon have been disabled. You have twenty-four hours to correct this before trap reclamation will begin. If that has not corrected the deficit, after a further seventy-two hours, parts of the dungeon itself will be reclaimed. This can only be stopped once enough energy to resume normal operations has been generated.’

He held back a curse as he pulled up the information on the second dungeon. Even with all the modifications he had made to the traps, they were still sucking up too much energy. He had thought it was fine, that the shared pool would keep things in balance.

The first dungeon was generating so much energy, he hadn’t seen a case where the dungeon would burn through all the energy. He had been a naïve idiot.

When he made the lasers and other traps weaker, they became less efficient at taking out the blighted elves. That meant that more of them were surviving than before, even if the number was still small. No, the real problem came from those blighted elves who could sense danger. More of them had come through, and they were causing the rooms those elves were trapped in to run constantly. All the while, they were content to sit wherever it was safe.

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More and more elves had come through the portal like normal, while fewer and fewer had been dying. It increased the energy coming in, but also spiked the energy being spent. He had to acknowledge that this might not have been the best design for a dungeon.

At least the deficit wasn’t too bad. He would have enough energy to resume normal operations shortly. The problem was how many blighted elves were now inside the second dungeon. He hurriedly disabled all of the traps, except for the ones nearest the exit. That way, even if the traps came back online, he wouldn’t be wasting energy anywhere except at the spot where they all needed to go anyway.

It was infuriating that he had miscalculated like this, but it was all part of learning.

He would do better going forward, or something like this could become a major danger. The shared pool was certainly a blessing, however, it didn’t solve everything. He could see that there was energy inside the energy pool, but the second dungeon wasn’t accessing it at all. The dungeon was going to have to generate enough energy on its own first to reactivate the systems before it could then access the shared resource pool again.

It was a good thing there were a lot of blighted elves inside the place. Their mere presence was making a difference, just at a slower pace. Energy from beings inside the dungeons came at a consistent but slow and low rate. Death provided that same energy in a large burst all at once. Where it would take dozens of hours or more to get the energy from something just existing in the dungeon, their death would give it all at once.

He only had a few minutes to work through everything and get the dungeon in order before they drove into the processing facility. Unlike the last time, all the cores had already been taken out of all the bodies. All they needed to do was unload all the bodies onto the forklift that would weigh them.

The same representative as the week before inspected the beasts as they were loaded onto the massive tray on the front of the forklift. He marked down each type along with their numbers, keeping a running tally going as the three unloaded their trailer.

When they had finished, he lifted the tray into the air to get the final numbers and ran everything through the computer. It spat out a cheque for the initial payment that he needed to sign. He handed it over to the Holmes, and their business was completed.

“I’m glad to see you didn’t run into any extra trouble this week. It seems like you had a good hunt.”

“It wasn’t too bad; we had some regulars come join our hunting spot halfway through the expedition. They were interesting folk, and it was a lot better than the mess we ran into last week. That’s for sure.” Nina told him as they all climbed back up into the truck.

“Do I need to warn them about joining other’s encampments?” The representative asked carefully.

Niall shook his head. “No, they asked before joining ours and kept a respectful distance. The argument could be made that they were leeching off us, but we were already using the fan, so there was no major difference there. Sure, we kept things going a little longer than we would have on our own, but it worked out. We got a better haul than we would have otherwise, and Nate needed the extra practice with his secondary weapon.”

The representative nodded. “Alright, I’ll leave it alone. You all take care, and I’ll be seeing the two of you in a couple of days, yeah?”

“Yup, that’s our new schedule.” Niall agreed as he put the truck in gear and drove them slowly out of the processing facility.

“How did we do?” Nate couldn’t help but ask.

“Not as well as last week, where we had two trips, but not bad either. We were farther in this time, so the quality was better. Then, with all the extra time we spent in the subdivision, we were able to toss out all of the rats we had collected. They’ll buy them, but they really aren’t worth much, outside of the teeth. We should have collected their teeth.” He finished with a shake of his head.

Nate looked inside at his core and saw that Aura was sleeping soundly, wrapped around both his cores. No wonder she hadn’t responded to the message from the dungeon earlier. She had probably been exhausted after leaving the dungeon and then fighting beside him all night long.

They parked the rig and trailer, with Nina pushing the first button on a remote she pulled out of the glove box. Jane met them a minute later as they were transferring items back into the SUV.

“Hey Nina, Niall, and uh?” She tilted her head, drawing a blank when it came to Nate’s name.

“Nate, I don’t think we were introduced last week.”

“Right, you all were trying to get away from that hazardous wasteland you left for me as fast as you could,” Jane said with a grin. “Judging by the state of your clothes this time around, I’d say it’s going to be a more normal cleaning.”

Nina nodded. “We got a little bloody taking out the cores, but Nate and I were on controlling duty the entire time. Niall, on the other hand…”

They all looked at him. His tonfas were a decidedly close-range weapon, and he had the blood stains to show it.

“Right, bring extra blood stain remover like usual,” Jane told her with a shake of her head. “I have no idea how you all do it. I like being clean too much to ever let myself roll around in the filth like all of you expeditioners seem to enjoy doing.”

“We’ve been through this, Jane. We don’t enjoy it, it’s just a fact of life. Now, with that in mind, I think it’s time for us to go take our showers and get cleaned up.”

A few minutes later, now freshly showered and in clean clothes, the three of them were on their way to the bank. The last item before they could head home was to get all of the cores processed.

“Before we go inside, does anyone need any of the cores for anything?” Niall asked as he parked the SUV.

“I need void or shadow cores for my cultivation, but I can use two of every other kind of core. The weapon I use in my dreams is powered by cores, and different cores provide different effects.” He quickly explained to them. “I do a fair bit of training with my kukris in the dreams, but sometimes, I need something a little more powerful or that can just go through everything faster.”

His dad just shook his head at that unexpected little tidbit of information. He and Nina had no clue what to make of his ‘dreams’ anymore. Not that they ever had, but the appearance of Aura, and the revelation that his dreams were taking place in the structures which were actually dungeons, changed things. That meant each night there was yet another version of their son fighting in those things.

It was a little hard to process at the moment.