I really hope this works. Magnus lay curled up like a massive snake as he watched the newest floor being created. Floor twenty-three was tiny so far and the drake was watching intently as the fire rune formed not too far away from the core room.

You and me both. Valens had been looking forward to using runes for a while and he still wasn’t able to do much; this would be a solid step forward in his capabilities.

Focus now Valens, and don’t worry about blowing up the core room. The wards I put up are more than enough to handle the backlash.

The core carefully finished sculpting the last detail of the oversized fire rune. For a minute he just looked at the beautiful runes, every last curve and edge looked flawless to his dungeon sense. What do you think Magnus? I think this one is about perfect.

Yeah, I can’t tell from out here. I’m using your senses to see the rune remember? If you can’t tell anything is wrong with it I won’t be able to either unless I physically go out there and check. That being said it does look fine to me, I think you should go ahead and fire it up. No sense in waiting.

Did you just make a fire pun?

Magnus opened his mouth to refute the blatant slander then stopped. Maybe I did, it was a slip of the tongue. It won’t happen again; puns can be rather incendiary jokes. The drake waggled his scaly eyebrows as he grinned.

Valens let out a half-laughing groan. That one was even worse, and it doesn’t even make sense. How in the world are puns incendiary?

You can’t explain humor, it takes all the spark out of it. I should have guessed a rock wouldn’t appreciate any sort of blazing humor.

Harr, harr Magnus I’m turning on the rune. If we blow up it's your fault for making so many terrible attempts at fire puns. He carefully poured mana into the waiting rune, wincing as his aura was drained as well. His view and power over the floor abruptly shrank as the rune began to glow. Valens braced himself for an imminent fiery explosion, but instead, the rune sat peacefully on the proto floor throwing off waves of heat. Huh, it worked.

Of course, it worked. I had complete faith in you. The drake stealthily turned off a few of the more mana-hungry wards he had put up for the occasion.

Thanks for the vote of confidence Magnus, but I’d thought for sure you’d jinxed us. That and I half believed the last rune was a fluke. I still can’t tell what I was doing differently from before to make it work.

The drake shrugged, seeming unperturbed. That’s usually how it goes with inscriptions. You just practice over and over again until the right motions become ingrained in your muscle memory and it finally works. I guess it's a bit more intuitive for you using your aura and all.

Wait so humans just practice over and over until they get it right? What about the explosions? It seems like any one of those could kill someone, much less several.

Yeah, that’s why there’s not that many humans around that can use runes. It takes dedication, skill and most of all a high tier to get right. Even if you’ve only had limited success it's still very impressive for your tier.

Thanks. Valens paused as the ambient mana of the latest floor shifted as it adopted fire mana into its basic makeup. Well, it's nice to see this worked, now I won’t have to bother you every time I make a new floor.

Thank goodness for that, you’ve been churning them out like crazy. The oversized lizard grumbled as he stood and stretched.

That’s because I don’t have to spend time respawning things right?

Right, that’s one of the big reasons at least. You learned that from me, remember? Magnus yawned cavernously and laid back down. I’m feeling like a nap. Just keep doing what you're doing, power isn’t built in an instant and all that. When I wake up I think I’ll take a look around and stretch my legs a bit outside the dungeon for a few days.

The core suppressed a wave of nervousness at that. Alright, that sounds fine. None of the adventurers have been making it anywhere near the fake core room anyway. I also want you to get me fish though.

The drake squirmed and looked around uncomfortably. Really Valens? Can we just not? I don’t like fish and I’d have to bring you a lot for you to get the pattern.

Don’t be a baby Magnus. Just put them in a big bag or something, or even just put them in your fancy invisible closet if you want.

It's a dimensional storage that was very hard to make thank you very little. And I’m not putting fish in there, I’ll just carry it. It's only going to be tier one fish though you hear me? I’d have to bring even more for the other tiers and no way that's happening.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Fair enough. Valens thought that the drake was being unreasonable. It was kind of funny to be honest, seeing his normally logical companion in such a tizzy.

Are you laughing at me? Magnus stared suspiciously at the passage leading to the core room.

No, not at all. He carefully tamped down on his feelings of amusement. I’m going to get back to work on the new floor. Have a nice nap.

Thanks, goodnight. The drake grumbled out before curling up and closing his eyes. Valens took a quick peek at his entrance just to check and saw light streaming in, it was definitely not nighttime. His sunstones were in day mode too, well he supposed a turn of phrase didn’t matter much anyway. Time to get back to work.

----------------------------------------

Celia ducked through the trees carefully making her way back to the group. She stepped up behind them, and then promptly ruined her entrance as a twig snapped. The other two turned around and she had to suppress a sigh, it seemed like she still wasn’t completely used to moving around the forest yet.

“What did you find?” Vance asked, their erstwhile leader didn’t seem that alarmed by her sudden appearance.

She suppressed a grumble and admitted to herself that maybe it was for the best that she hadn’t startled the two. “It looks like the village that issued the contract is up ahead. We should probably go there and try and figure out exactly what kind of monster we’re dealing with.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary.” She looked over at the third member of their little group and frowned. The boy seemed about the same age as her and Vance, but he looked even younger crouched in the dirt. “I think I’ve found some tracks, they lead away from the village to the east. We should follow them now, and then swing back to the village.”

She glanced over at Vance who scratched his head. “Could you pick up the trail again if we went to the village first? It would be nice to have a rough idea of what we’re dealing with here.” Celia nodded, that made sense to her, no need to rush head first into things if they didn’t have to.

“It might be tricky to find it again but it should be too much of a problem. My real concern is that these tracks look like they might be human, or maybe goblin. But if it is human we might have bandits in or near the village and going there might let them know we’re here.” Celia looked over curiously at the patch of dir Arthur was examining. It just looked like dirt with a faint imprint on it to her.

“That’s concerning, could you tell exactly what we are following if you had fresher tracks?”

Arthur shrugged a little helplessly. “That depends on what the tracks are in. If there was some nice mud I might be able to tell, but it hasn’t rained in a while. Also, goblin and human feet are really similar, and I’m not that familiar with tracking people or goblins.”

“Wait, shouldn't you have seen a lot of goblin and hobgoblin tracks in the dungeon?” Celia voiced her questions as she kicked at a rock beside the path.

Arthur scowled up at her as he looked away from the ground. “That’s because the greenskins are so thick on the ground in the dungeon that I’ve never needed to go looking for them. Besides, I've tracked more deers and wolves than anything else.” Celia shrugged, fair enough he didn’t need to be so defensive though.

“Alright, thank you, Arthur. I think we’re both glad that you’re here because neither of us is of any use with tracking.” Celia reluctantly nodded along, but she wasn’t completely useless at tracking. She just wasn’t that good yet. “Can you follow the trail?”

“Oh yeah, but are you sure? Could be dangerous, we don't know how many there are.” The mage made a good point but she wasn’t especially concerned.

“If there were that many monsters the village would have been overrun by now or at the very least this would have been a higher tier contract. I say we fight the monsters and then check in with the village.” Vance had a determined expression on his face and Celia shrugged but stayed out of the debate.

“Trusting in what was reported doesn’t seem like the best idea, they’re not experts at identifying monsters.”

“That’s true but even if that is the case it still makes sense just to follow the trail. If the villagers can’t identify monsters properly then why would talking to them do any good?”

“It's still better than wandering with no plan.”

“Enough.” Celia surprised herself as she cut off the noble before he could continue the argument. “It's probably a good idea to follow the trail before it goes cold right? We don’t have to be stupid about it though. Once we get close I can sneak up and see what type of monsters or bandits there may be and then come back. Also, remember that this is a tier one contract, so I highly doubt there’s going to be any sort of major threat.” She shrank a little internally but kept a brave face as the two boys stared at her.

“You know what that sounds sensible, let's do that.” Vance was the first to speak, and Celia had to hold in a sigh of relief. Arthur was still looking mutinous though a dark scowl across his face.

“I still think this is reckless, this isn’t a dungeon you guys we don’t know for certain what tier enemies they’ll be. What if they're tier three again Vance what then? We narrowly avoided getting killed last time, and that's not an experience I’m looking to replicate.” Now it was Celia’s turn to stare, tier three? When had they fought a tier three monster and how were they still even alive? Well, she probably knew the answer to that last part.

“It's not as dangerous as you might think, Arthur. I doubt our babysitter is going to let us walk into a death trap.”

“Babysitter?” Arthur tilted his head looking confused.

Celia picked up a rock and threw it into a nearby tree. There was a muffled thump from the complete opposite direction followed by playful screeches of alarm.

“What was that?” The mage glared suspiciously at the trees, a shimmering blue ball of mana in his hand.

“Grandmother.” Vance groaned and he rolled his eyes. “She probably thinks this is funny.” He joined Arthur in glaring out into the trees. “How did you know she was here though?”

Celia shrugged. “It made sense to me, they wouldn’t have sent a little noble like you into the woods without some sort of protection. So I guessed that Sophia was probably hanging around here somewhere.”

Vance groaned his teeth looking annoyed, and turned back sharply to the path. “Fine, Arthur let's go.” The other boy wordlessly shrugged and led the way. Apparently having an overpowered nanny put his objections to bed. Celia trailed after the other two, having a party was stressful. She was looking forward to the end of this job.