Carlos lost track of time meditating as he gradually eroded the mana absorber, but he was pretty sure at least a couple hours had passed. His mana redistributor was feeling more and more overfilled, loaded with mana it was struggling to make use of. Finally, the next speck of mana he moved into it sparked a change. A wave of compression passed through the soul structure, and it shrank, becoming more dense. It felt more solid, and stronger.

He paused to reassess, checking the status window his introspector provided, and sure enough, the mana redistributor had leveled up. Or layered up? He still hadn't asked Amber what the standard terms were for this. In any case, it was more effective now, and was giving him control of 20% of the mana he used, up from 11% before. That still left 80% getting taken by the mana absorber and wasted, but nearly doubling his control was a fantastic boost. Accounting for how the absorber pulling in mana had counterbalanced a large part of even that 11% for removing mana from it meant the effective increase was more like five or six times.

Carlos smiled and got back to work. He'd moved about the same amount of mana again when a voice interrupted him.

"Carlos, what is this bizarre writing? Some kind of code? I don't even recognize the symbols." Carlos had to focus for a moment to make sense of it.

He opened his eyes and looked. It was Darmelkon, sitting on a chair he'd procured from somewhere and leafing through the pages of Carlos's notes. Carlos was glad he'd accidentally written those in English. "Why should I tell you?"

Darmelkon set aside the sheets of paper and leaned forward, clasping his hands together. "I could list a variety of threats, but I prefer more cooperative dealings. More repeat customers that way. If the information is valuable, I can easily afford to pay for it."

"Ah." Carlos closed his eyes for a moment, trying to keep most of his focus on continuing to break down the mana absorber, and inclined his head towards his notes. "That information is not for sale. Also, I don't appreciate you looking through my property."

Darmelkon leaned back in his chair, and raised his left foot and rested it on his right knee. "You seem to think you have a meaningfully strong bargaining position. While under guard and wearing suppression cuffs, with no allies. Curious."

Carlos just looked at him for a moment, then closed his eyes again.

"I wonder, does the information encoded in that notebook have to do with how you moved a dungeon core?"

Carlos continued meditating without reaction.

"Our dear Enchanter over there seems to be fixated on figuring out how it was done through the exercise of his craft, and has missed the obvious that there is a person who already knows."

Carlos let him keep talking on his own, paying just enough attention to tell whether he needed to respond. Darmelkon waited several seconds before continuing.

"That information would fetch a... high... price. If sold before someone else figures it out."

Amber spoke up, tentatively. "Should- Maybe we should at least consider it? Carlos?"

Carlos sighed, and shook his head. "Not without knowing more about why he wants it." He moved another speck of mana away from the absorber, and did his best to split his attention. "Lord Merchant, how did you know that I took the dungeon core, instead of destroying it? And why do you and the Enchanter consider it so valuable? And are you not concerned about Tornay's apprentice overhearing this?"

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Darmelkon blinked. "I'm surprised you don't already know. I thought your knowledge of dungeon cores was well in advance of ours, and why would you take one if you don't know its value? As for the apprentice, I put up a sound barrier for privacy; he can't hear anything we say."

"My reasons are private. It sounds like the answers I asked for, while perhaps not common knowledge, are hardly exclusive and secret. If I don't learn them from you, I will learn them from other sources in time, and knowing them is a prerequisite for any potential deal for my knowledge."

Darmelkon shrugged. "Fair enough. Not many people know because of how rare it is for anyone to actually destroy a dungeon core, but destroying one causes a powerful explosion. Powerful enough, even for a dungeon as weak as this one, that my son would not possibly have failed to notice signs of it. There would have been a crater in the rock where the core used to be, and the walls, ceiling, and floor of the entire room would have been significantly damaged.

"As for its value... Do you know what dungeon cores and the most powerful of magic items have in common?"

Carlos thought back to what Amber had said back when she had first found Purple, back in the inn in Erlen, and nodded. "They both draw in ambient mana from the environment around them."

"And do you know how those powerful magic items duplicate that ability of a dungeon core?"

Carlos hesitated. "I... am beginning to suspect, but why don't you confirm it for me?"

"The most powerful magic items are crafted from dungeon cores. They do not duplicate the ability, but rather incorporate an object that already has it. But turning an immobile dungeon core into a moveable magic item requires an extraordinarily expensive and difficult ritual, to take control of the core's mana flows and separate it from the anchor of its connection to its dungeon. Now, if the need for that ritual could be bypassed..."

"I see." Carlos frowned. That sounded rather unpleasant for the dungeon cores in question, and he did not want to abandon Purple to that fate. He needed to stall for time, and a chance to figure out a solution, though. "I will need time to consider."

Feelings of worry, nearly panic, forced their way into his mind with a message from Purple. [Consider?!]

Carlos sent back reassurance. [I won't leave you to them. But I need time to figure out how to stop them.]

[Oh. Relieved.]

Darmelkon stood and turned to go, holding onto his chair to take it with him. "Very well. But don't take too long to consider. A price in platinum for that information would be low, but only as long as you retain your monopoly on it."

Carlos returned to meditating, focusing on stripping that mana absorber dry.

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About half an hour later, Carlos's mana redistributor compressed itself again, and the strength of its control over his mana flows grew more than half again greater. Meanwhile, the absorber seemed more and more fragile. He felt like the mana of its structure was under pressure, and the containment of that pressure was gradually eroding. Not long after his redistributor's second compression, the absorber's containment released a lot of its pressure and expanded, letting the remaining mana in it fill all the space it had originally taken up.

Encouraged, Carlos kept chipping away at it with renewed fervor, only taking a break to eat something when his stomach growled at him. His redistributor compressed a third time, growing even stronger, and the remaining strength of the absorber crumbled with increasing rapidity. By mid afternoon, it was a husk of its former power, reduced to the level of a newly formed soul structure, and he had to decide what to do with its remains.

He didn't want to give away exactly what he had done, if he could avoid it. He was sure he could break the mana absorber entirely, rendering the suppression cuffs non functional, but Tornay would probably notice that sooner or later. Instead, he probed at it with his introspector, and found that with it so severely weakened he could easily throw a metaphorical wrench into its workings. Something that was part of his own soul and would stay behind when the cuffs were removed, but that would disable the absorber entirely as long as it stayed in his soul.

At last, Carlos had full control of his own mana again. Now he just had to figure out a way to make that useful.