“So,” Emma said as they both teleported past the stone wall blocking off the stairwell. “Finish the basement first, or plan out the upper floor?"

“I guess we plan the upper floor, right?" Zoe suggested. ”That way we can be happy with everything before we start finalizing plans?"

“That makes sense. Yeah. Let’s do that, then.” Emma agreed.

Zoe formed some rudimentary stairs leading up to the level of her previous enchanting workshop and cleared out another matching footprint just above their ground floor. Neither of them had thought much of what was going to be going in the upper floor, and seeing all of the vast empty space they had to work with felt almost overwhelming.

As though they had to find some purpose to it all. Some reason for it to exist. But there just wasn’t one, they’d realized. They didn’t need as much space as they’d given themselves. What other rooms would they need? A jail? As fun as they idea was, they’d never have anybody imprisoned in their home even if they had somebody they needed locked up.

In the end, they decided on shrinking the space and leaving just a handful of rooms. Joe’s room would be moved upstairs rather than being down in the basement, and they added another storage room for their clothes, cat toys and other more luxury items. The basement storage room would be reserved for useful belongs — food, cookware, spare furniture and the like, and extended into where Joe’s room would have been.

With the rest of their home planned and the walls raised, the girls fell back into their comfortable routine chopping logs and filling their home with the natural, somewhat pinkish wood. They started on the basement, building the walls for the rooms — though one wall was left unfinished in what they’d designated as their forge to be finished later.

The alchemy room was a bit of a random addition, Zoe admitted. She’d never found it to be all that enjoyable of a skill to work with, and hadn’t found a use for it yet that she couldn’t replicate with her other skills or a well made enchantment. But if nothing else, being able to one day make food for Emma’s cats would be a very welcomed addition to their lives.

Jeffrey had learned, and was providing all of the food that the town needed for the time being. Quite a profitable venture, Zoe imagined, having a monopoly on people’s pets’ lives. The ethical concerns about such a business something Zoe chose to ignore. Maybe one day she’d try and create some enchantment that automatically produced pet food and revolutionize the industry.

Or maybe somebody else already had, and she just had to find them. Zoe shrugged. The food wasn’t all that expensive and if somebody couldn’t afford it, she doubted Jeffrey would just leave somebody’s pet to die anyway. Joe certainly wouldn’t let it happen if he heard of it.

They didn’t have a pot for the alchemy room yet, but Zoe wanted to make her own pot in their forge. But they also didn’t have a forge yet to make a pot in, and Zoe wasn’t sure when they’d be getting to all the finer details of their basement workshop area. The passion was lost, in the basement.

Upstairs was a different story altogether, both of the rooms they made were gorgeous, in Zoe’s eyes. Joe’s spare room was themed after a proto-typical inn. Rustic looking wooden planks on the floors, a stained wooden barrel for a table. A chipped stool next to it and a bed standing on flimsy, splintered wooden legs.

The mattress itself was thick, soft and immaculate — a stark contrast to the rest of the room which looked musky and worn. As fun as the idea was, sacrificing Joe’s comfort on the very rare time he happened to stay over would ruin all of it.

All of the finishing touches had been put into the rest of the rooms — the warming and cooling enchantments in several of the alcoves in the cats’ rooms, a few pieces of furniture made to flesh out Zoe and Emma’s rooms. Some more hangers for their closets and some more permanent light fixtures made with Zoe’s new Light skill.

The final design Zoe ended up on were three flat pieces of white rock enchanted with Light, Meditation and enchanting placed into a lantern with mirrors directing the light outwards into their home. Each on their own were rather dim, but Zoe lined the ceiling with dozens of them and created another enchantment that would cover all of the lights in a room with a coiling branch of wood so they could be turned off, so to speak.

It was a little inelegant and Zoe would have preferred being able to just turn off the lights themselves. But that would have required turning off each of the groups of three individually which was itself rather inelegant. Someday, Zoe would find a better solution and replace the lights — in particular she was interested in finding a way to have a single enchantment flash mana that the rest of the enchantments would see as an instruction. But the process was very complicated and they had far better uses of their time.

They returned to the moon a few times as the month passed, to check on the jagged rock of frost left in the carved out pit, and each time the pit seemed colder than the last. The frost that crept along the craggy interior grew thicker and climbed further up the tall walls, but there didn’t seem to be any indication that a dungeon was forming. No anomalous mana — at least aside from the speed at which mana moved near the rock which Zoe had already experienced before. No creatures spawning from the frost, tearing themselves out of the rock or harassing them when they came.

Just a terribly cold pit carved into the moon. It was disappointing in a way, but as long as it kept getting colder, Zoe left the rock continue to do its own thing. Zoe began dumping in even more enchanted balls of ice to help the elemental stone out, in the hopes that more mana would convince something to happen, though nothing had just yet.

Building out her forge was much simpler than it was the first time she’d tried, with everything she learned, and all the new skills she had. Two large holes were carved in the remaining stone wall in her forge, one at either side of the wall.

The left hole was just a simple hole, with ample space for fuel for a fire or enchantments to get even hotter than wood could get. Next to it was a large metal anvil she’d purchased from a metallurgy store in Foizo.

On the right was the far more interesting hole, a bloomery. Or at least, she hoped it would be. Both of the holes had chimneys that exhausted out through the same pathways as the ground floor, which needed to be expanded a little to accommodate the much more aggressive flow of smoke from the bloomery and fire-pit.

The other walls were covered in shelves and racks, most left empty to have space for future projects she might work on if she ever ended up finding time to work in her forge. But some were filled with different tools she’d need. Hammers, pliers, heavy shovels or fuel for the fires.

Her first test run of the bloomery proved much better than her previous one decades earlier. The bloom she got from it was far less brittle, and with several hours of pounding away at it with her several different sizes of hammers even managed to create what seemed to be a cohesive slab of iron.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Unfortunately, she had no flux to fold and weld the bloom, but even just getting a workable iron bloom from her forge was enough to put a smile on her face. After so many long years, her home was finally finished. She had a functional forge, enough rooms to even house guests. Proper, stable lights that cast a warm, consistent glow throughout her home.

It was a beautiful thing for her, to see her initial plan finally come to fruition. Even if there were a few changes to the plan with Emma living in it now as well.

Joe had come over to see their finished home, and they were all sitting in the living room with the fireplace crackling, spitting orange embers that drifted up through the chimney to be exhausted out through the same place as everything else.

Zoe wondered if that would ever cause problems if they ended up with everything running at once, but she’d added plenty of enchantments into everything to keep the air flowing in a single direction.

“It’s a lot nicer than I expected.” Joe said.

“You like your room?" Zoe laughed.

Joe smiled and shook his head as he leaned back in the wooden chair. “Yeah. It’s a nice room. Thanks. You know I’m not going to be staying here though, right?"

“Yeah. But maybe sometimes. The room’s yours, if you ever need it. It’s mostly just a spare room though, really.” Emma said.

Joe nodded. “Well, thank you, then. It looks like you put a lot of care into it.”

“We did.” Zoe said.

“It’s so much work, Joe. I had no idea how much work building a home was.” Emma said.

Joe chuckled, his belly shaking as he did. “There’s a reason people pay so much, you know?"

“I know that, I just thought it would be more magical than this. This was work, Joe. Physical labour, work.” Emma pressed herself into her chair as she pouted.

“Was it worth it?” Joe asked.

Emma looked at Fennel laying on his back on the rug, staring up at the ceiling. He looked over at her as she did at meowed. “Yeah, it was. The cats love their room, too.”

Oliver was somewhere else, Zoe had lost track of him after he ran down the hallway when the fire started. He seemed to enjoy the warmth of the fire, but as soon as it started crackling and popping he was gone. Sometimes he’d pop back and sit at the door just to stare in and watch them, but he was probably laying down in Emma’s room or one of his beds in his room.

“How’s the moon dungeon going?" Joe asked.

“Cold.” Zoe answered. “Just cold.”

“Still nothing, huh? You think there’s something else you have to do? Maybe it’s not actually for a dungeon at all, Zoe.” Joe suggested.

“Yeah, maybe. It’s still changing, though. I’ve started dropping in more balls of ice that I enchant too, I dunno. If it stops getting colder at some point then I’ll try something else, I guess. But at least right now there doesn’t seem to be a reason to stop, as far as I can see.” Zoe dragged her feet across the soft rug on the floor.

“Well I hope it works out for you, Zoe. I’m sorry that the council couldn’t have been of more help to you.” Joe pursed his lips.

“It’s fine.” Zoe shook her head. “I didn’t really expect them to be of much help after you told me that they’d want to keep it a secret through some magical means, but I was kind of just hoping it would work out somehow.”

“I think they should just tell everybody what they know, personally.” Emma bent down and picked up Fennel, placing him in her lap. He meowed and laid down, digging his claws into her arm as he pressed into her with each of his paws.

“Not a good way to stay in power, probably.” Zoe said.

“Screw that, let people make dungeons. That would be so much more fun.” Emma sighed.

“What’s your plan for dinner?" Joe asked.

“Nothing, yet. Why?" Emma asked.

“Peter and Lauren left me with some stew they made when they came to visit last night, if you want some.” Joe suggested.

“Is it good?” Zoe asked.

Joe laughed. “Is it good, she asks. They run a restaurant, Zoe.”

“Yeah and I’m a really good enchanter but that doesn’t mean every enchantment I make is worth making.” Zoe said.

“It’s good, Zoe.” Joe rolled his eyes.

“Then lets go eat!" Zoe stood up.

Joe groaned as he stood up. “You could’ve got me immortality before I got old, Zoe.”

“You didn’t want it, Joe. Which was honestly, very upsetting for me. That was hard to accept. And then you just went and took it anyway.” Zoe chuckled.

“Well I’m paying the price now. You two should count yourselves lucky you have such young bodies.” Joe said.

Emma laughed. “Don’t count me in that. I’m in my forties. She’s the one who looks young enough to be your grandchild.”

“I’m not that young.” Zoe said.

“You think we could get discounts somewhere?” Joe asked.

“With my level? I doubt it.” Zoe said. “One glance and people will know I’m immortal.”

“I thought you had an enchantment that could hide it?” Joe asked.

“I do, but I didn’t end up liking it. It feels like lying, and I just feel bad about it, really.” Zoe said. “I thought I’d like being all secret and stuff but I dunno. It’s hard to find the balance, sometimes.”

Joe nodded. “Well enough complaining, lets eat some stew.”

They sat down at the dinner table in the kitchen and Joe summoned a large glass container full of brown stew. Zoe lifted some bowls and spoons from the shelves with her Space skill, floating them over to the table in front of them while Joe scooped out stew into each with a large wooden ladle.

The stew was delicious, savoury with a hint of sweetness and a small whiff of an aged, dark vinegar that cut through the richness. The large chunks of dark meat were juicy and tender with a somehow still crispy exterior that was salty with the slightest hint of citrus.

“I should visit their restaurant someday.” Zoe said. “This is really good.”

“They’re good cooks. They were a great help back when they stayed at my inn.” Joe said.

*Ding* A dungeon has formed from your mana. Would you like to claim your dungeon?