After the last day of the year and before the first day of the year there is a day outside of the calendar and the year.

Non-Day. Zero Day. Null Day. Void Day.

These were all various names that the day was referred to by.

While in physical reality it was a part of time like any other day, for legal and social matters it was a day that did not count. It was not a work day for anyone, no matter their social status. If someone's work contract was measured in days, this was not considered one of those days even when other holidays were.

It was a day to break routines, to just exist for a day. Even food should require a minimal amount of work to prepare, and most people ate cold meals and leftovers on this day.

There were exceptions of course; critical care and other urgent matters would always exist. But outside of important needs, one was to rest, relax, and otherwise be outside of all the normal events of day-to-day life. Even fancy dress should be avoided; simple robes or tunics and trousers were the outfit of the day for all, even for emperors.

Mordecai had always considered this his least favorite holiday.

Inactivity was difficult for him to begin with. The day also brought with it reminders of the worst aspect of chaos. Entropy and emptiness.

If one meditated to pass the time during the empty day, this was the topic they were encouraged to meditate upon.

The chaos that a person like Li brought was the chaos of life. It was activity and movement and energy.

This chaos was the chaos of decay. A faint echo of what the existence of the unending void was like, and a preview of what the universe could become once more.

He did his best to while away the day quietly, but Mordecai could not say he enjoyed it. Stillness and quietness, a full day of the quiet most often found in the pre-dawn twilight. A short period of it was good and refreshing, a full day of it was a burden.

In this, he envied both Kazue and Moriko. They were both able to fully indulge in having a low-energy day. If this was an awakened avatar, he'd at least be able to sleep some, though that wouldn't help his core. Kazue's core was able to daydream readily and it allowed her to pass time without feeling it heavily.

Though he was not alone in his suffering; Fuyuko was painfully restless. During the day it wasn't as bad for her as she could just hang out with her friends and talk, but later into the evening she had far too much unspent energy to fall asleep readily, and Mordecai decided he should help, which might help him a bit as well.

So they idled away the time playing simple card games that took little effort to keep track of. Depending on the game, you either won or lost when your hand was empty. During that time their conversation was just as idle and they avoided speaking of anything important.

Fuyuko's problem was that she was a very energetic teenager and had gotten into a routine of physical activity and training of some sort every day. This left all the things she would normally do to burn off energy as things she was not supposed to do on this day of broken routines. The girl's unspent energy caused her to practically vibrate even as she yawned. Tired, but not actually sleepy.

Mordecai stayed up late enough with her that sleep eventually won out. They'd been hanging out in her room and she was already in her bedclothes, so it was easy to put her in bed and tuck her in. He left a note telling her to sleep in as late as she wanted and that she could eat whenever she chose; breakfast would be waiting for her.

The next day was the first day of the year, the first of the month, the first day of the week, and the first of spring. This left every year identically aligned with thirteen months of twenty-eight days each.

The Spring Equinox was also Sakiya's holiday. It was a time to celebrate one's passions as well as new beginnings, and some passions were best seen to in private.

However, Moriko had come to a realization that caused her to swear. She could only indulge so much now that she was a priestess because she needed to be available for others to consult with if they wanted advice.

Mordecai and Kazue had teased her of course, talking about what they would be getting up to without her, and that led to a rather passionate outlet of energy early that morning. Neither of them meant it of course; on a normal day any of them might pair up based on simple availability, but for a celebration like this, it would be mean to leave out Moriko. So further fun activities would have to wait.

There was still plenty for them to do. Kazue's avatar was focused intently on her writing while her core was preparing for their next zone. While the three months of winter had in a sense been very quiet for the dungeon, it had also been steadily providing mana gained from the soldiers training in the sewers along with the occasional delvers from the Kuiccihan guard and the kitsune hunting groups from Azeria that were currently stationed at the dungeon full time.

Mordecai's core was helping Kazue's core as much as he could, but the final steps would be up to her. If the rebalancing went according to plan, this should be the last truly difficult zone to claim. The rest would still require effort, but there should not be anything tricky involved.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

For his avatar, Mordecai finally decided on some dungeon business that was related to something he was passionate about. He was looking forward to this tournament after all.

The next zone should be ready within the week, so setting the tournament date for five weeks from today would give plenty of time, as they had declared there would be at least a month for people to clear the downward zones and make it to the arena. It wasn't going to be a lot more than that four-week time frame, but it would still be at least a few days more.

Mordecai spent much of the day wandering the trading post and striking up conversations with their various visitors. He made sure to bring up the tournament and hand out at least one flier to each group. The word had already spread from when they'd given the rough timeline, now he was confirming the date.

Right now their inhabitants were celebrating too, but tomorrow he planned on tasking them with making fliers that inhabitants could take out of the territory and a few days later he was going to send out a couple of groups to spread the news.

He didn't want them to go farther than Riverbridge or Azeria, but if one went north there were still some small villages and individual farms in that radius as well as travelers on the roads. More importantly, having the inhabitants be seen would make an impression on some people that words alone would not.

For spreading the news further afield, Mordecai was mostly counting on Ricardo's network of merchants, though he had also made sure to send word to the capital thanks to Bellona's secretary desk. It wasn't exactly a direct way of spreading news, but he had invited the royal family to attend or even participate. It wasn't hard to include some wording to let them know that both Orchid and 'Ruby' already intended to compete.

Mordecai was fairly certain that Bridgette was going to qualify, but that was in large part because she was delving with Orchid's group. Bridgette, Nainvil, and Brongrim were consistently the ones pushed to their limits. Orchid, Paltira, and Xarlug struggled significantly less, but they still had to work for it. Kansif, the most experienced of the group, remained true to her background as royal babysitter to a much younger and even more mischievous Orchid and deliberately focused on protecting people so that the others were the ones to do most of the work in overcoming the inhabitants that they faced.

Akahana and Ricardo had also managed to clear the ocean zone with the right groups, but Ricardo needed to travel to maintain his business as a successful merchant and caravan organizer. Of course, the winter had provided him with some serious upgrades for his primary wagon and gear for Zara and Tiros, and he had promised to return either before or shortly after the tournament in order to provide transportation to the southern dungeon.

The disguised alicorn and nixie now had paired harnesses spun out of starlight thread. The harnesses let each of them use many of the abilities of the other; the most important of those for this purpose is that they would let Tiros fly and let Zara breathe underwater and swim as perfectly as Tiros. The harnesses only worked when both were being worn of course.

The wagon itself no longer needed wheels. Instead, it could simply float passively and indefinitely. The indefinite nature of its ability to float was a trade-off, compared to a vehicle that could actively fly by itself. That was why the harnesses were important, the hover enchantment would let the wagon remain mostly level and steady while being pulled by flying steeds.

Ricardo decided that he was going to keep it looking grounded for now, with wheels rolling along the ground. The floating was fully functional but it normally hovered low enough that with wheels the wagon simply appeared to not be carrying much.

When Mordecai could no longer find any new groups to spread news about the tournament to, he switched to his training. No one was delving today either, so the inhabitants had plenty of free time on their hands. Mordecai sent out a challenge through the dungeon for sparring partners to meet him in the arena.

He didn't limit it to individuals either. Pairs were always allowed to meet his challenge, while trios or more could ask and he'd judge if it was a match-up that would be useful for everyone.

Enki and Cimbu proved to be a potent combination and were the only pair to win their match against him. While both were focused on earth related powers, there was also only so much one could do against earth as well. Fire, ice, electricity, corrosion, and other such energies could all be warded against.

It was much harder to ward against a boulder to the face.

Zushi's abilities were similar to Mordecai's specialty, which gave Mordecai the advantage. Mutually balancing out void abilities meant that Mordecai could then use his other abilities while Zushi's defenses were weakened.

Sarcomaag's power was too diffuse for the mushroom king to bother considering a challenge. He was a strong match against large groups of weaker foes, but he was not a good match against singular strong foes.

Mordecai had a fun time against the ocean zone bosses, including the entire pirate crew. Cephelia and Dhamini were at a disadvantage compared to their normal environment, but training for other situations was good for them and the match also gave them the opportunity to improve their teamwork with each other and the Big Cheese.

The ratlings were in perfect if chaotic harmony of course. It was coordinating outside of their group that was the problem.

He worked his way up through larger groups of different compositions. Mordecai won a little over half of the spars, even when facing multiple opponents, and his losses all included at least one raid boss or a zone boss from the marshlands or ocean.

Even Carmilla joined in for a match, though she insisted on a solo spar and to have it on the Other Side so as to be at her full strength.

This meant they had to go topside for the match. While the zones were reflected across to Faerie, the arena and other areas near the core were not represented and the space was simply more of the dark underground sea. Mordecai suspected that it was because these areas moved every time the dungeon got deeper, making them too ephemeral to leave a mark on Faerie.

It was a rather close match, and in the end, they called it a draw. If it had been an all-out fight, Mordecai's more destructive powers would have tipped things in his favor, if at the cost of massive damage to the area nearby. But spars were as much about skill and control as they were about power, so within those limitations, a draw was a fair conclusion for a duel against a faerie princess turned swamp witch.

That was the last spar Mordecai accepted for the day. It was almost time for dinner, and both Mordecai and Carmilla had to get cleaned up before they were to join the others at the dining table.

Kazue, Moriko, and Mordecai retired a couple of hours earlier than they usually did, and everyone else pretended to not notice.

After all, it was still the first day of spring, and there were still celebrations to be had.