I slept like the dead and when I woke, I found Cara and her siblings waiting for me in my room. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that Angel and Xander were chasing each other around Cara who was waiting for me to wake up. As soon as they noticed I was awake, I had Angel and Xander jumping up and down on the bed.
"If you want to get refreshed and come down, we are about to break fast. I think everyone would like to see you." Cara said handing me my clothes which had already been cleaned. "Angel, Xander, let Matt get ready, he will be down soon."
When they left my room, I washed my face and finished getting dressed, but before climbing down to the clearing, I decided to quickly take inventory of the extra rewards what Will had placed in my storage. The first items that caught my attention, were 2 masks, both with the name "The Mask of Anonymity". It allowed the wearer not to be recognized and even hid that a mask was being used. "Will really thought of everything" I thought to myself. This was exactly what I would need to represent the dungeon without revealing my identity and I assumed that the second mask was for Cara.
Other items which he added would certainly come in handy, like extra healing potions, and gold, and some other magical items that I wasn't quite sure how I would use; but the masks were a godsend.
I went down to the clearing where everyone was already at the table and there was an empty stool at the same place next to Cara, as the previous evening. There was a variety of fruit and juices, milk and bread and cheeses, as well as slices of different meats on the table.
"Sorry to have kept you waiting", I said as I took my seat. "I am impressed with the table you have prepared. Do you eat this well every day?"
"Today is special" Ilha said "it was the least we could do to thank for saving us all last night. We are in your debt. Please consider our village as your home when you are in the dungeon."
"In the end, I didn't really do much, I was just fortunate that my sword banishes demons, and that they couldn't pass through the mana barrier. If either of those things hadn’t worked I would have been in a predicament as well."
"Some of us can create mana barriers," Kitikat said, after swallowing a piece of bread with meat. "but we have no way of destroying those creatures. So, if they return, we will only be able to delay them at best."
"I am working on a solution to that" I replied "but I will need to return to my world first. I had mentioned to Cara that she is welcome to join me during my trip, if she is still interested." I looked toward Cara, who was smiling like she had just won a lottery. She looked to her parents who nodded their approval."
"Don't worry, I will make sure that she is safe, you have my word. My world can be dangerous, but it is much less dangerous than the dungeon. Also, I don't expect to be gone for very long. The dungeon has arranged for a portal for us to leave and return to this level, not far from here."
"How are you feeling today?" I asked Fenon and Lyna who had been victims of the shadow creatures.
"I feel like a lost part of my life force, I feel like part of me is gone." Lyna said, apparently still affected by the what happened to her. "I would not wish this on my worst enemy, but I am happy that you could stop them before they could take any more."
"Same for me" Fenon agreed. "I feel empty. That is something that I never want to relive. I am not someone who runs from danger, but I can't see myself facing one of those creatures again."
"I have been thinking about that.” I replied “After breakfast I would like to try something, if the two of you are OK with an experiment." They both nodded in agreement.
"When are you planning on leaving?" Ilha asked, "I would like to prepare some things for you to take with you on your trip."
"I will be ready when I have finished with Fenon and Lyna. We won't need much though. In my world I will be able to buy anything we need once I sell some of the rewards I received from the Dungeon, so she should only need a change of clothes and just a little food for about half a day.
After we finished eating, I invited Fenon and Lyna into the tree house I was staying in.
"This is totally experimental" I warned them, "but I don't think that it can do any harm to try." I withdrew the remnants of the creatures, now cleansed of their demon essence, from my dimension ring.
"I think that there is a chance that what the they took from you, may still recognize you. I am hoping that your life force may return to you if given the chance. I would like to free what is inside and see if it returns to you." They both nervously agreed.
I brought the mana enclosed essence between them and removed the mana barrier. At first, two clouds of a translucent milky essence hung in the air between them, but after a few seconds, part of the cloud started to drift toward Lyna, and another part separated from the mass and drifted towards Fenon. As soon as they touched the skin of each, they were quickly absorbed into them."
They both fell to the floor, their heads in their hands, weeping. "Is everything alright?" I asked, concerned that I had made a big mistake trying to return their life force to them.
Lyna looked up, her teary-eyed face covered with a big smile. "I feel whole again! I can never thank you enough. You are truly a blessing to me and to the whole village."
Fenon stood up and gave me an enormous hug. "Thank you" he sobbed, thank you so much." Lyna stood and hugged us both, crying and still smiling.
They left my room, and I went down just a few minutes later. I found most of the villagers performing different tasks and Ilha was wrapping up some supplies for us to take on our trip.
I noticed Fenon and Lyna were talking with a group of their friends, apparently explaining what happened. As their story came to an end, there were more tears and hugs and more than a few looks in my direction.
Turning my attention back to the preparations for our trip, I was surprised to see how much was already neatly packed on the table. "Do you think you have enough there?" I asked Cara, looking at about a couple of days of food. I wasn't sure if light sarcasm worked when speaking telepathically.
"Humor her" she replied with a smile, "It's the first time I am leaving the village, anyway, food doesn't go bad in dimension storage."
"Promise me you will be careful" Ilha said as she finished the last package.
"Don't worry, we will be back before you know it, and we will try to keep you posted via the Dungeon. I assume that you can speak with the Dungeon?"
"Yes, we sometimes speak with the Dungeon." Kitikat replied.
"I don't know if he gave you his name, but he told me I could call him Will."
"Will." he repeated. "Very interesting, I never thought to ask his name."
I put the supplies in my storage and I assumed that Cara had her clothing in her own storage space although she wasn't wearing any jewelry, so it was still a mystery to me how she accessed her storage.
We gave our farewell to a few of the villagers and had to struggle to get the children to let us go. Angel and Xander were crying, they wanted absolutely to come with us.
Once we managed to extricate ourselves from them, we headed off to the place in the woods, that Will said we would find the portal. While we walked, I prepared Cara for what she would find once we arrived and briefly sketched what we would need to do before having a place to stay for the night.
I realized that one of the first things we would need to do, was to go shopping for clothes for Cara and for myself. All of my clothing, aside from what I was wearing, was lost when the tower appeared. Cara was stunning no matter what she was wearing, but she stood out a bit too much in her current attire, which was a simple, dark blue, knee length dress and leather sandals.
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Before we could do anything, though, the first priority, was to trade some of the gold from the tower for cash, as I was stone broke when I entered the tower, and I no longer had any place to call home.
A couple of minutes later we arrived at the portal location, the portal was there as promised. A step through the portal and we were back in my home neighborhood, or what was left of it. The place we arrived at was behind a wall where no one could see us arrive, and as we stepped out into the open, we could see the tower just a few hundred yards from us.
The whole area was swarming with the police, just about every news agency was there as well with their trucks with satellite dishes on the roofs. There was also a group of people holding up signs with messages such as "Welcome to the Big Apple", "We come in peace", "ET Phone home", "Take me with you". Just about any alien related text was there.
Another group was from some doomsday religious cult with their signs “Repent for the end is nigh”, “May your Kingdom come on earth, and look, it hath arrived!”.
Besides these groups, there were also a lot of people curious to see the tower. As we got closer, I recognized a few of my neighbors as well as some persons I knew from my short time in university. I say short time in university because I couldn't afford to continue the university courses, due to my brother Seb's hospital bills.
Thinking of this brought back a lot of unpleasant memories. My brother came down with a very acute and rare form of bone cancer and was still now at the Mount Sinai Hospital for treatments, but even with insurance, the costs were high, and my parents had to mortgage their house and sell everything of value and still they couldn't make the payments. I gave everything I had saved for tuition and had to drop out of university. I couldn't find a job that paid enough for my rent, so I was going to lose my apartment as well.
"Matt" I heard someone call my name and I recognized the voice. "We thought you were killed by the tower, there are a bunch of people looking for you."
"Wow, Danny, it's been a while. Nice to see you again. This is my friend Cara, Cara this is Danny, a childhood friend."
They greeted each other although a it was a little awkward as Cara's greeting was different from our classic western greetings.
"Danny, I don't have much time now, but could you tell whoever is looking for me, that I am fine?" Danny was only half listening as he couldn't seem to take his eyes off of Cara.
"My apartment was destroyed by the tower and I absolutely need to find a place to stay for the night. I will give my family a call as soon as I get a new phone."
"Yeah, sure, no problem. I'll give them a call and tell them that you are fine. Happy to see you're ok."
"Hey," he said as we started to move away from him "When you find a place, give me a ring and we can meet for lunch and catch up. And Cara, you can come as well."
"That would be great great, and thanks for letting everyone know that I am OK.
We continued on our way to find a gold shop or a pawn shop. I was living in one of the poorer neighborhoods just outside of New York, and there should be quite a few of that type of shop in the area. As we didn't have money for a taxi, we were forced to search for a shop on foot. I don't think Cara minded though as she was taking in all the new sights and sounds with a like fascination.
“This is nothing, just wait till we get over there. ” I gave a gesture towards the skyscrapers in the distance .
"This place is unlike anything I could have imagined." She said, her eyes taking in everything "Please explain to me how these things move on their own?" she said pointing at a car. And those things flying around the tower, how do they stay in the air?"
"I wish I had a memory stone for the history of our world to share with you, but I will try to explain it to you as well as I can. Basically, they create energy from burning or rather making a fuel explode. They use thousands of those explosions to turn wheels of the vehicle which we call a car, or in the case of the helicopter flying around the tower, it turns wings so fast that it can lift the helicopter into the air. When the fuel or liquid has been all spent, they need to put more in a reservoir in the vehicle. It is more complicated than that, but that is the basic idea."
"I am actually pretty sure that the same could be done with mana if someone took the time to build it." I added, at the same time imagining in my head how I would go about it.
As we walked, I explained other things about our world that were unfamiliar to Cara, such as how the roads were built, the power cables and telephone lines, satellite dishes and mobile towers. The music coming out of the cars was particularly fascinating to her and I decided I would buy her a smartphone and a subscription to Spotify as soon as I had some money.
She found the way people dressed particularly interesting. So much variety in clothing and hairstyles and jewelry. "As soon as we are settled in, we can go shopping for some clothing." I told her casually, and she was maybe more excited than when I said that she could come with me on through the portal.
We arrived at a gold exchange and it was critical to the plan that we remain anonymous, so I donned the mask of anonymity turned to Cara and asked her if she recognized me. It was obvious from her expression that she had no idea who I was so I removed the mask. "Peek a boo" I said smiling, as comprehension dawned in her eyes. I handed her the other mask and when she put it on, the effect was instantaneous. I could no longer recognize anything about her. Neither her clothing, nor her face. What was strange was that she wasn't blurred nor was there anything about her changed, it was just that she wasn't recognizable as Cara.
Once we were confident that we couldn't be recognized, we entered the gold exchange shop.
"I would like to convert some gold for cash" I said placing a stack of gold coins on the counter.
"I need a driver’s license or some form of identity" the person behind the counter said, acting uninterested, although it was obvious from his initial expression that he was very interested in the coins I had placed on the counter.
"I do not have any identity card on me. All my possessions were destroyed when the tower destroyed my neighborhood." I replied.
"No identity, no cash." he said, probably expecting to leverage for a better deal for him. I was expecting this.
"I think that you will be interested in buying some of these off me." I said, "Do you know where these coins are from? I imagine that you have never seen coins quite like these before." I let him take a good look at one of the coins. He turned the coin to look at both sides and rubbed it on his gold tester stone, and read the inscriptions with a magnifying loop.
"I never have seen coins like these but that still doesn't mean that they are worth more than any other coin." He replied.
"What if I told you that these coins came from inside the tower that appeared a couple of days ago?" That definitely got his attention. "And that you are the first person to see these coins aside from myself and my friend here. How much do you think these would be worth on e-bay? The first gold coins from treasure chests of the world's first dungeon tower?"
"Do you have any proof of what you are saying?" a glimmer of greed was now burning in his eyes and his smile.
"I could give you proof, but of course it won't be in the form of a certificate as the tower is obviously not recognized as a certificate authority. But what if the stone was accompanied by something that was not of this world? Of course, the price would have to go up accordingly and I don't know if you can afford that."
"Let me see what you have to offer." he said, his air of indifference fading..
I took out one of my spider beast-cores, visibly glowing with mana. "This is what is known as a beast-core. This is the mana core of a very large spider-like creature from one of the top floors of the tower. This is the first beast core in this world, and is probably worth a small fortune, but once people start entering the tower, they will become more common place. For the moment though, this is the first, and the only one on earth."
"I don't have time to haggle, there are plenty of other shops in the area that will certainly be interested in what I have to offer but I would prefer concluding quickly. I would like to know your best price for the beast-core and for the gold coins. Or as many as you can afford now, in cash. I don't want my identity revealed for the moment, so it is cash only and known that I have plenty more coins and cores so it is in your interest to make a fair offer if you want to see me here again." His interest was now palpable, and I needed to play on my advantage.
"I will need more proof first.” He said. “I have never seen or even heard of a beast-core before, so how do I know that this is one? Prove to me that what you're telling me is for real."
"Fair enough." I said, as I held out my hand and formed a ball of milky white mana. His first reaction was to take a step back before he moved in to look at it more closely, through the thick multi-layered protective glass that separated us. He looked to be trying to figure out how I was doing that. But this was nothing compared to his expression when the mana became lightning and then fire water and finally a ball of ice. It sounds cliché to say that his mouth dropped open, but that is exactly what happened. It looked like he was struggling for what to say as his lips moved with no sound escaping his lips.
"What thee hell are you?" He said when he finally found his speech again.
"I am the Dungeon's Champion, I am a Battle Mage, and I am also a New Yorker who still has a lot to do today."
After that, there was very little negotiation. He gave me what I considered a fair price but he could only afford 2 coins and the beast core. I was surprised that such a small shop had so much cash on hand. He was disappointed that he couldn’t get more coins and more beast-cores, so I promised I would come back when I found the time later in the week. In any case, I now had more than enough for me to start on the first phase of my plan.
I knew that it wouldn't be long before the whole world would be talking about the new tower champion and the battle-mage in New York. There was certainly a video installed in the store, so the images would be all over the net, but as I was disguised, they wouldn't be able to identify me, or at least I hoped that they wouldn't.
This would also help me to facilitate the next part of my plan, which was to ride the wave of fame, to get the dungeon opened and to start the ascenders association.