Chapter 95

“David Chestermill wishes to notify you that he is about to enter an anomalous building at Redbud Ridge,” a robotic voice said. It had features that made it somewhat human, but something in its way of speech felt off just enough to place it deep in the uncanny valley.

“I see,” a woman replied, deep in her work. “Thank you, Icarus. However, I do not care. You should not notify me of every little insignificant detail. Simply write them down in a report somewhere.”

She wondered, briefly, if Icarus even knew how to write reports, but then her work became the main object of her attention again.

A little while later, she got up. She was upset about something, but not even she seemed to be able to really pinpoint the source of her emotion. It was more like a sensation of discomfort through her whole body, and she soon realized that it was quite similar to how her beloved lord had described being on the cusp of a rank-up. She wondered, for a moment, how lesser people who did not have the talent to make the leap must feel once their mana pools got this full, before dismissing the idea. The main part of her that did not care wished that the other, more inquisitive part of her mind didn’t go on a tangent, immediately starting to supply possible explanations and experiments to be run to test theories. Perhaps lesser talented people simply did not feel the discomfort. Better leave it at that, for now. She did not have the time and resources to pursue yet another avenue of research.

Only after a full day of working did she realize that Michael was back, and that perhaps she should go and see him. She felt ashamed, for a moment, for having forgotten about such an important thing, but quickly the emotion passed through and nothing of it remained. She had, after all, reasons to be this busy. Had Michael wanted to see her, he would have called for her.

Yes. She felt that it was the right conclusion. But since she was at it, she better check on him to see what he was doing.

On the way to the dungeon, she kept herself entertained by talking to Icarus on her phone. It was more of an exercise in frustration than anything else, but as things went, this was her own project and thus her own problem to solve. Most other people were too scared about alignment and other idiocies to really be of help, as if technology CEOs weren’t already blowing past this stage with their multi-billion dollar projects that they connected to the internet way before they knew they were safe.

“Icarus?” she said as she speed-walked to the dungeon’s entrance. With her magic, she didn’t need to use a quad bike to move about on the road, and she much preferred this method of transportation that allowed her to check on the plants she had made grow. The forest was looking empty, for lack of a better word, but her mana sight told her another story. The things she saw moving around in the mana were interacting with the vegetation and the animals now and were doing things. Not her problem. At least, not until it became Michael’s problem.

“Yes, ma’am?” replied the AI.

“Who am I?” Johanne asked.

“You are…” there was a pause. “Johanne of the Roses?”

“Hmm. Database access is a bit slow. What am I doing right now?” Johanne inquired.

“You are… querying me,” said the voice from the phone, a bit more confident this time.

Johanne shook her head lightly. The AI should be able to know better than this. “What day is it today?” she asked.

“It’s Wednesday, August 2.”

“And where am I?” she asked.

“You are in your soon-to-be lab. When it gets ready, at least.”

“Pah. Cheeky, but wrong. I am on the way to the dungeon,” Johanne stated.

“I see. As a magically enhanced language—”

“You little shit,” she cursed, and turned off the program. She would work on it later.

In the dungeon, deep within the valley, she found Michael. She knew she would find him there just by looking at the Time Element fluctuations at the entrance of the dungeon. Whenever her lord was inside, the consumption of said element was much greater than normal, resulting in a lower time compression inside. Soon, when she reached Silver herself, she too would cause such problems to arise. Alas, even though it would mean the loss of a very useful tool, or at least the initial weakening of its usefulness, ranking up brought too many benefits to ignore.

Chief of all, she would be able to direct even more and better quality magic to her mind, improving her intelligence further. It wouldn’t be nearly enough to achieve her lord’s—and thus her own—goals, but it was a start. Until she found better ways to enhance herself, at least.

“Icarus, what’s the current time compression for Michael?”

“To calculate the time compression, we need to compare the actual time (1 day = 24 hours = 1440 minutes = 86,400 seconds) with the compressed time (62 seconds).”

A python script appeared and vanished from the screen in a matter of moments.

“The time compression factor is approximately 1393.55, meaning that time is compressed by a factor of about 1394. So, for every 1 second of real time, about 1394 seconds (or around 23 minutes) of compressed time passes.”

At least, this was the factor the last time my lord went to the Valley. With his growing power, it should be decreasing steadily.

Johanne heard voices coming from Michael’s house. It appeared he wasn’t alone.

“Did you know that there's people who buy trash?” Travis’ voice said.

“Really?” Michael asked him. The sound was muffled from the outside, but well within Johanne’s ability to hear. She decided she would not enter until she had overheard more of the conversation. Not only that, but she wished to study Travis and his reaction to the dungeon.

She knew he had been forcibly kept sane while in the Valley for months by Michael’s magic—an aid she did not need—and she wished to see what effects lingered. For once, it was immediately apparent that his aura was much less strained under the dungeon’s influence than it should be, but a better look through her magical senses revealed that it was simply an effect of Michael’s own aura protecting the man.

Back when she had taught him aura manipulation, she had been instrumental in his discovery that auras were actually infinite in size. What she didn’t expect, however, was the speed with which he began to make use of this property. Something that shouldn’t be possible until well into Gold-rank territory, marking him as a genius beyond belief when it came to magic. That he could use this revelation to help others fight off the effects of the dungeon, even though only temporarily, was ground-breaking.

If she cared about other people, which she didn’t.

Nor did she think it was a viable solution to power-level others. Teams were being sent into the dungeon hourly nowadays, and while people were having problems adjusting, it wasn’t until they stayed for very long periods of time that things became severe enough to warrant intervention. Michael’s time was better used elsewhere. She wondered, for a moment, if one day the dungeon would be treated like it usually gets treated in the fantasy books that seemed to be quite popular online at the moment. Perhaps Unity corporation could give access to normal people as well, provided they registered with them, and for a price and a cut of the loot, becoming more and more like an adventuring guild.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

That would have to wait until information about the dungeon became public, however.

“It’s true,” Travis continued. “We tried putting our trash on [Ghost Market] and someone bought it within the hour. I don’t know what they are doing with it, and I’m not sure I want to know.”

“Is that how we handle your waste, then?” Michael inquired.

“It was an idea.” Travis offered. Johanne shook her head as she heard what Travis said.

“Nope,” Michael said, predictably. “I can’t be sure what that waste will be used for, and the last thing I want is to pollute the planet even more. Call me an idealist, I know it doesn’t really make a dent, but we have the money and means to deal with it.”

“How do you want us to deal with it, then?” Travis asked.

“Tome of the Unmaking Flame, for now,” Michael replied. “Remember, we don’t want to toss it into the dungeon, even though we could, until we know how the dungeon goblin reacts to it. It could be that it’s pleased we give it free energy, or it could make delving a living hell once it realizes we are using the dungeon as a dump.”

“I’ll tell David,” Travis said.

With that, Travis left. He nodded at her on the way out, then shivered once he was far enough from Michael for the dungeon to once again have an effect on him. Unlike most others, however, he could handle himself quite well even when alone. The others, back when they trained together when Josh had kidnapped her lord’s family, had begun to break down after barely two days in the Valley. She had had to use magical means to keep them blissfully ignorant of the problem, which had then made for a rather rude awakening the next time they went delving.

In any case, this was her cue. She knocked on the door, and Michael opened it for her with his aura powers. They were weaker than spell-based telekinesis, they consumed ten times the mana but were also always readily available, although at the cost of mental energy expenditure. At least, like with everything, practice would make them better and cheaper, while at the same time stretching Michael’s mana pool to grow larger.

“I think I have another skill slot now,” he said.

“How?” she asked, curious.

“Look,” Michael said.

Status: Michael Lexington

Level: 9/10 -> 10/10

Base Statistics

Advanced Statistics - Soulfire Silverweb Aura

Strength

281 -> 293

Mana Capacity (Silver)

1.86 -> 2.01

Dexterity

229 -> 240

Elemental energy Capacity

186 -> 201

Stamina

322 -> 333

Qi Capacity

18.6 -> 20.1

Reflexes

271 -> 301

Intent Capacity

1.86 -> 2.01

Intelligence

204 -> 214

Resilience

550 -> 600

Memory

218 -> 228

“I trained and I trained until I leveled up. I wanted to see what would happen. Care to guess what happened?”

Johanne frowned. His mental skills were lagging behind, clear indicator that he was favoring physical, magical and martial training over his study sessions. Plus Resilience, from spending so much time alone in the dungeon.

Why did he favor physical training, despite the super fun material she had given him on particle physics?

She thought about his question next. It challenged her own knowledge of skills, which she only had second-hand, not being a skill user herself. Hadn’t she known better, she would think he was testing her.

“Did you get a prompt to level the skill up?”

Michael smiled. “Nope. Just this.”

Skill Level up!

[Unity] reaches level 10.

You have reached the level cap.

“Is this it?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It is,” he replied. “The skill itself says that in order to increase the cap, I must increase the rarity of the skill. How, I don’t know.”

This was a conundrum. Qi had to be involved, with how skill rarities worked, which was a problem because he still didn’t manage to locate his dantian. Was his talent with mana the reason he was so bad with Qi? She didn’t know. She had no talent with either of the energies herself. What she knew was that he had to figure it out quickly because stunted growth would be deleterious in the long run.

“Anyways,” he continued, “did you come here to see me?”

“I would like to attempt my ascension to Silver, my Lord,” she said, bowing her head. “I would like you to oversee it.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling warmly. “Do you have any ideas?”

She did. They went to the field where he had practiced his own aura exercises, and there she sat on the same rock he used for rest. Closing her eyes, she focused inwardly. She did not have a Skill Sanctum like he did, but she wanted to replicate Michael’s ascent to Silver anyway, as close to how he did it as she could. She began by visualizing her own mana, willing it to crystallize into flowing veins of power within her own inner space.

Time flowed. A whole day in the real world meant several months in the Valley now that there were two powerful sources of disturbance messing with time dilation at such a shallow floor. Months during which her lord tended to her, repaired her body, and made sure nothing could disturb her. How he managed to rank up in mere minutes after a battle was beyond her, but as she emerged after months of meditation, she knew she had done it.

She felt like a whole new person.

Michael left after spending a couple of days with her, exchanging pleasant words, and forging unforgettable memories that would stay with her forever. He had things to do, after all, and was feeling antsy after so much time in the Valley. Even though it didn't affect him as much as it did the others, the Valley still had an effect on him. Out of all the people she knew, Johanne was the only one who didn’t feel anything. Given how much she interacted with the dungeon, this made her feel strange at times. Like she didn’t understand a fundamental part of other people’s existence, but then again, she felt this way most of the time.

The only times she felt normal were when she studied magic or science. Sometimes the other researchers and scientists understood her and Michael, most of all, was the one she could relate to most of the time. The one she made an effort for.

In any case, she had things to do now that she had reached Silver. She had experiments to run. She walked to the edge of the Valley, where the mists swirled and hid everything that wasn’t the circumscribed plot of land, rivers, and mountains from view.

“Identify Weak Spot,” she muttered.

She smiled as little cracks, pathways of energy, appeared. She felt something weigh on her mind, like a presence: watchful and malicious. It didn't like what she was doing to its place. It’s the dungeon goblin, she thought. Finally, she understood what the others talked about when they said that this place gave them the creeps. It wasn't that bad, though.

There were other things on her mind. With almost rabid speed, she cast the next spell. “Major Teleportation.”

Then she vanished, only to find herself in a dark room. Dispelling the darkness with magic, she looked at the remains of the amber where she had been trapped for most of her life.

“Now the hardest part,” she whispered. “Window into the Past.”

She rewound time, seeing her own life through a window of magic. She saw herself trapped in the amber for eons. She rewound even farther back. There was a blur of movement, and then the room was empty.

A wicked smile, filled with anticipation and a touch of dread, appeared on her face. She manipulated the spell until she was sure she had individuated the right moment. Then she played it back at normal speed. She saw herself walk into the room beside someone. She was in chains, and the other person was so strong that she felt like his aura penetrated through her spell, through time, and was trying to consume her for daring to look into his past. She was scared, she realized, an emotion she rarely felt. She wished Michael was here, but then she wished he wasn’t. She didn’t want him to see this.

The window collapsed right as the man trapped her in the amber. The version of her from the past seemed to lock eyes with her for a moment before the last remnant of the magic vanished.

“Icarus,” she said as she left, pulling out her phone.

“Yes, madam?” Icarus replied.

“Update my own entry on the Candle Light database. My eyes only. Not even level-0 can access it without me knowing.”

“I cannot directly update it yet, madam. You should know that.”

“You can update it locally, and I will upload it.”

“I would, but internet access is cut off. You should move to a place with better reception.”

“Right. You are still in beta for a reason. You don’t know where we are?”

“I do not, madam.”