At 1:12 in the afternoon of the second day of language lessons given by Alesandro to James and the kobolds.

Alesandro’s companions were showing obvious signs of boredom, not that I could blame them, all of us it seemed were annoyed by the situation, although we were making progress. I myself, simply because I had more time to practice, and I was recording everything. The kobolds were being slowed in their progress by their lack of writing practice. Only the head scout Ssylasss, hard to get the sibilants right with his name, had any significant practice writing at all it seemed, and he was having to assist his fellow kobold language student. Serena was puttering about in the kitchen of their quarters, Rhys was whittling a small block of would on the larger of the two tables in the dining area and making a mess with the sawdust, and Timoteo had left their quarters two and a half hours ago with his bow and a full quiver, presumably hunting for food for the group.

I had checked in with my cameras in the public areas of the kobold cavern, their head elder seemed to have things well under control, as she had gotten the other elders and the scout groups to register themselves with the panel. Additionally it seemed she had started to experiment with user permissions on some of the other kobolds. Shortly after todays lessen had started, around 8:02 AM, the elders had sent out four of the kobold scouting parties, I suspect to fill the larder, so to speak. The other kobolds were still investigating the facilities I had provided to them, the ogre from the splashing sounds I could hear outside his residence was thoroughly enjoying his private bath. I am so glad I am decided not to involve myself with cleaning up after my tenants, I suspect I would have worn my core crystal back down to a nub.

I decided that I would interrupt my language lesson to get a quick question answered by Alesandro, depending on his answer, I may be able to alleviate the boredom of his companions, somewhat at least. I flashed the display off to the side which I was using to show my progress with the language lessons, cleared the display and wrote out my question to Alesandro, “Do you or your companions staying with you here play any musical instruments that you know of?” I got a quick laugh out of Alesandro before he covered his mouth and stopped laughing with a quick cough. Turns out Alesandro himself is basically tone deaf, and can’t sing or play an instrument at least not without being tossed out of the tavern in question. Timoteo might be able to play a drum, but he hadn’t ever seen him actually do so, Rhys apparently played a pan flute, but his mule stepped on it early in their trek out to investigate my dungeon. Serena apparently played a harp, but couldn’t bring it with her as it wasn’t suited to travel. After explaining that to me, Alesandro waved his had towards the kobolds, and said “let’s get back to the lesson.”

Having heard Alesandro describe the foursomes musical talent, such as it was, I decided that I should do something about the lack of musical instruments on their part, and whilst doing so, free myself from having to write every piece of music I could recall from Earth down and try to recreate it. I may not have the internet yet, and certainly not Spotify, but at the very least If I record their playing, I will have some music that I didn’t have to write myself. For Timoteo, I decided that I would make a twelve tone aluminum tongue drum. For Rhys, I made a 24 tube pan flute, getting the sizing correct for his hands was somewhat tricky as I had to play with the tube dimensions more than I had intended to. For Serena, I made a twelve string lap harp in the Chinese style, replete with ten individual finger picks. The strings were the trickiest part as I made them from twined Kevlar fibers, the rest of the instrument I made from graphene coated aluminum. At 3:46 PM I finished the instruments and I placed them on a small folding table just inside the entrance to their quarters from the pocket canyon, which I made just for the occasion, Timoteo would have to be worse than blind not to see them when he returned.

It wasn’t until 4:54 PM that Alesandro decided to end todays language lesson, I could tell that the two kobolds taking the classes were grateful that they were done for the day. They left as fast as they possibly could, if I were able to blink, I might have missed their exit they left so quickly. Alesandro leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms and legs a bit before blowing out a heavy sigh, obviously glad that his work was done for the moment. Before he got up I flashed my display to get his attention once more, and wrote, “Timoteo isn’t back yet, but, I left presents for your companions in the entryway, I think you all may be pleased, do let me know if you or your companions would like something adjusted.”

I saved the recording of his high speed scamper for future dissemination, I strongly suspect that he was more bored with the language lessons than he had previously showed. When Alesandro arrived back in the common dining area, his exclamation that I had delivered some presents to the entryway, caused a bit of a stir. The three of them hurried over to the entryway, and from the gasps and smiles, it looked as though I had made a good decision going with all analog instruments as they were easily recognizable.

I somehow missed how the pan flute ended up in the hands of Rhys the gnome, I rechecked my video feed three times, still not a clue. Serena was more calm about retrieving the lap harp, but she did have a big grin on her face as she did so. The three of them seemed to discuss my workmanship with the instruments, but it was difficult to tell without slowing down the audio feed as they were speaking almost twice as fast as normal. Serena and Rhys played a few experimental notes on the instruments they claimed, and a few on the tongue drum and then after a brief discussion with Alesandro decided to hold off on playing with the instruments until after Timoteo had returned, and everyone had eaten.

Just as the sun was beginning to set, at 6:36 PM, Timoteo returned to the living area, carrying, a pair of hare, a marten and a raccoon. Apparently he had a fairly successful day hunting, as he walked in to the entryway, I flashed the entrance of the game chute that led directly into the cold room and game preparation area. It took him a minute pondering what I wanted, but once he dumped the game into the chute for the floor conveyers to take his game into the prep area, he smiled for a moment realizing he wouldn’t have to worry about dripping anything in the living area I had provided. Once he arrived in the kitchen area, having deposited his bow and quiver into his bedroom, he immediately noticed the instruments on the large dining table. The four had a discussion, trying to figure out what exactly I was after by providing them instruments, to make things easier on them, I put a message on the display next to the door for the train, saying, “I simply want to hear music of this world, as opposed to my own. I will play some of it that I have recreated for you all later.”

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As I hadn’t flashed the display to get their attention, it took them almost twenty minutes before they noticed the message, having decided that their speculation was useless and to just start to prepare dinner. There was a moment of recognition, and understanding once the message was translated by Alesandro, I was still missing some vocabulary to write out the message in “trade”, so I was lazy about trying to put out what I could in “trade”. After they finished their dinner of hare cutlets, mixed greens and as of yet unidentified spices, I did get what I wanted, a serenade.

The music went on until they got tired of playing at 11:23 PM, Rhys obviously wasn’t a musical prodigy, but he was lively, producing ditties and catchy tunes on request by the others in the group. For one song, Serena coordinated with Timoteo, and they produced a hauntingly beautiful piece with a quiet rhythm reminding me of a gurgling stream in the rain. I left the audio feed on record once they started playing the instruments I had provided, and left it playing on the speaker as I got back to work, having lazed off most of the day, what with language lessons and making the instruments.

From 7:08 PM on I focused my attention primarily on stretching a pinhole south in the mountain range as far as I could reach. I hadn’t really tested myself in the past several weeks, it was going to be interesting to see how far I could reach. After 1:30 AM, I had my answer, not nearly as far as I would have liked, a mere 55,634 meters, and those last 4,542 meters got noticeably and progressively harder until I could make no further progress just by stretching out the pinhole I had created. The target distance for the tunnel I wanted to create of 125 kilometers south, was still a bit out of reach, depending on the reason for my maximum reach, I may or may not be able to solve the issue by growing the ball of plasma spinning in my inner space. I suspect trying that method though would take longer than my current plan, moving my core room further south to provide a more accessible location for my intended dungeon location.

Of course, I had a ton and a half of logistical problems to deal with, before I could move my core room 80 kilometers south of my current location, not to mention that I now had tenants to deal with as well. Well, the sooner I started the work, the sooner I finished. I started the prep work that night, reconfiguring the fiber cable connections, adjusting circuit contacts to be both more robust and to carry as much bandwidth as I could manage without compromising on the structural integrity of the system. My core room rail car changed multiple times over the course of the night, my sulfuric acid backup battery system was ripped out and replaced by a beta-voltaic diamond battery half the size.

It took just over half the night to fully charge, as I couldn’t just wave my figurative dungeon core hands and make the battery fully charged. I had managed to create ions before, however, it seemed as though the difficulty in adjusting electron distribution went up with the number of atoms I was attempting to adjust at once. So, I left a trickle charge in the battery and let my existing electrical grid charge up the rest of the battery. In addition to wanting to move my core room 80 kilometers I also wanted to move my core room at least 1 kilometer down, so as to make it more difficult for others to reach me directly. Having watched Alesandro and his comrades defend the pocket canyon confirmed my supposition that magic was present in this world, and that I would need all the defenses I could get for my core crystal, even if my current tenants weren’t hostile to me at this time.

The next week, was very much more of the same, although I had made good progress towards the goals I had set for myself. The shaft I had created for my core room stretched a full kilometer deep into the mountain. The adjustments I had made to my core room allowed me to remove the bundles of fiber I used to have connected to the room, I replaced them with the rough equivalent of leaf spring style wire contacts that connected to their corresponding cables on each side of my core elevator shaft. The good news with that arrangement was that I could get rid of constricting cables, the bad news was that the contacts would eventually erode from use, especially if I ended up traversing the shaft on a regular basis.

Once I had reached my target core shaft depth, and finished all the adjustments that the core room needed, I then lowered my core room down to the base of the shaft. Frankly I was never so glad that I wasn’t claustrophobic as when I lowered my core down the shaft. I had armored the shaft and the core room as much as I could without compromising the data transfer capabilities I needed to manage the infrastructure I had put in place. As I performed the move during the middle of the night, whilst my tenants were asleep, it appeared as though they hadn’t noticed the adjustment of my position, well, at least not yet. I would have to see if that was still the case once I started moving my core south.

My language lessons had been going well, and I was able to at least have some simple written conversations without Alesandro having to translate everything I wrote. On day seven of my language lessons, I produced four small touch capacitive tablets that wirelessly integrated into the network of devices that I was building, loosely based on my vague understanding regarding IPv6. The tablets launched a simple text interface that had a chat application that allowed them to talk to each other, as well as myself. Having to use “trade” in casual conversation with all of them, outside of my class with Alesandro and the kobolds, was helping to speed up my language comprehension by leaps and bounds.

Of course even if I was advancing my “trade” skills the kobolds still needed instruction, and unfortunately for Alesandro, he wasn’t going to be getting out of that part of the bargain as soon as he was with me. The kobolds, besides those partaking in the lessons, seemed to be adjusting to life in their new cavern quite well. They had managed to bring in a small herd worth of sheep for their ogre on the fifth day of their tenancy, and had managed to load up their egg chamber with all of the eggs they had brought with them, as well as a few new ones. Having to maintain my presence in that chamber was going to be a major hassle until after I got more infrastructure in place, or until I learned what they used as their primary source of mana for their eggs if they didn’t have access to a dungeon. That was going to be an interesting conversation with the kobold head elder, I was going to need Alesandro to mediate that one so as to limit possible misunderstandings.