“Miss Aunaluna” Grandmother Elf, the elderly elf who only went by this title called out.

“Auna is fine.” Straightening up from weeding the farm with many people she gave a look to the woman. “What is it?” The next semester was starting tomorrow, since the people came Auna didn’t have too many issues. The elders were happy to manage the people.

“We would like to build a schoolhouse.” Grandmother Elf explained. “We would like to take some space on this level. There is not really enough room in either village. We know there are too few teachers, and none have the basic skills in anything. We still want the children to go to school.”

“They don’t have the basic educational skills?” Auna asked.

“Many rural teachers don’t, it is too expensive for the small towns. So, country kids need supplemental classes to correct this if they manage to test into a city school. Same thing happens if they move to a city as well.” Chloe answered for Grandmother Elf.

“Well, couldn’t we teach the teachers the basic skills? If they were teachers, they should be able to get it after a few classes from us.” Auna spoke as she opened her map. “Holy fuck.”

“Language!” Grandmother Elf yelled before blushing and quickly apologizing.

“Look.” Auna showed her map to her friends paying no mind to the elder.

“Does this mean I won’t have to give up farm space?” Ciela asked looking at the map. Far off in the corner, there was unexplored space. It was beyond the boundary of the fields. On every side but this small upper corner there was an invisible wall. Back when they discovered this dungeon Auna had weaker mana, and a smaller range on her map. As such she did not like having it up always, instead spot-testing the invisible wall.

“Yes. Come on.” Auna led a group of roughly ten people to the unexplored area. After walking out of sight of where the invisible wall was everywhere else the people on the farm looked half their size. It was funny.

“See this?” Auna walked down a hill, that was perfectly unnoticeable from the farm as the farm was the top. “A cave.” Spinning around from the path down which was roughly one flight of steps a huge cave opening carved out the whole hillside.

“Sneaky.” Jensen laughed as he peeked inside. “Any monsters?”

“None. Look.” Auna pointed out the dungeon flowers behind them and around the cave mouth.

“Let’s go!” Jensen ran in with everyone else following them.

“Wow. Why didn’t we see this on the dungeon screen?” Auna asked as she touched the podium on this special floor.

“If it is not found, it is not registered. The same thing happens with stairways.” Meredith answered looking around. The cave had gone down for a few minutes into an underground lake. It was beautiful with glowing green moss everywhere. Enough so even people without night vision could see well.

The podium that Auna was at sat in the middle of the lake on a small temple island she had to take a bridge to. The glowing moss covered it fully, Auna having to scrape some off to touch it. The water was warm, and glowing with a magical light.

“Why is the water glowing?” A random wolf beastkin that had been farming asked.

“Not sure.” Auna walked up making a show of it she spoke her skill name out loud. “Moon Appraisal.”

Item: Pure Magic water.

Description: Pure Magic water from a dungeon. When water is infused with magic via stone, person, or environmental absorption, it becomes magic water. Magic water is a coveted ingredient for many potion makers as they would rather use their magic for the potion making not infusing the water. Many potion makers do not take the time to properly infuse the water with magic, making the potions less effective. The magic water raises the efficiency of any potion made by a minimum of 30%. Some magic water has an affinity, if there is no affinity it is pure. Pure Magic water can be made naturally, or by infusing the water with every type of affinity.

“I wonder why it is magic.” Auna asked looking in the water as she showed the message to everyone around her.

“There!” A person pointed to the bottom of the lake. “Are they magic crystals?”

“They are, and of many different affinities. We should not remove them. Add that as a rule.” Auna quickly looked to the elder to make sure she understood.

“I think that is best as well. We could profit from the magic water, our alchemist could use it as well. It seems there is an underground river feeding this lake as well.” Grandmother Elf bowed.

“I agree.” Auna nodded.

“Can I farm mushrooms here?” Ciela smiled tugging on her vig sisters’ shirt. The small farm was already covered in the green moss and dirt from the cave. Having not cared why the water glowed she instead explored the cave with Jensen.

“Yes. We will build a path with low walls to guide people out of the cave away from the mushrooms. We will build a school not directly up top, but to the side of the cave opening. There should be enough space. It should keep the children from being able to pick the flowers as well.” Auna guided everyone to the top and off to the opposite side of the path.

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

“This should be enough space. The builders gave me a rough amount of space that would be needed for a two-storey building and small yard for the children. This is roughly twice that.” The area she was looking at was easily 20 acres or 20 of their craters.

The dungeon had played a trick on them in the beginning. The flowers had stopped in rings and had wide open grasslands in between. Once they had actually explored more, they counted nearly 600 acres. Of course, they only farmed less than three of that themselves including the trees. Now though, they would be able to increase that by a lot. Ciela was happy. Now that they even found this place roughly an hour walk from their current fields. It was only a few minutes from the podium though. It was most likely designed for the children to find the podium and farm the cave, and land near it first growing outwards. It was too late for that though.

“I am glad the walk was not useless.” Auna sighed thinking about how long it would have taken them if their levels were not higher than average.

“We should get horses to help in the field, and travel between the podium and here.” Grandmother Elf continued. “Before when we used the other podiums or the lobby we would be placed in the starting point of the floor. Now that we have this podium we should be placed here.”

“We need money first, then proper clothes and supplies for you all. After that we can buy horses. Besides I think we need to spend money on the building of this school, no?” Auna pointed to the place they had selected for the school.

“Yes, the builders said they would need more than the stone from the mines. They are going to give me a list after they see how much land the little farmer was willing to give up.” A warm smile graced her lips.

“Well. I guess our gross incompetence solved that issue.” Auna laughed at everyones’ faces.

“You children are far more advanced than anyone I know. Even I an elf am only level 63. You children are going to reach the level of hero one day.” Grandmother Elf gave Auna a gentle pat on the head.

“Anyway. I am going to allow you and that list of people you gave me yesterday to use the doors. We won’t be around as long from now on. School will take our time. We spoke with the mayor in town and you guys can use the door. We had these moon brooches made, wear them when you go to town. The mayor will recognize them, as well as both Gary guild leaders.” Auna handed over ten pins. The children had matching ones.

“They are very pretty.” Grandmother Elf turned the full moon made of white quartz and metal in her hand.

“Jensen had them made.” Auna nodded towards the grinning boy.

“Anyway. You have the chore list, right?” Auna had begun walking back to their fields.

“Yes, and we should be able to sell more materials. The water-born have been exploring the fishing village, they have found different ocean materials. Mostly coral, but also a few pearls. We also understand we have to check the clearing, especially on days you can’t sneak away from school. Everything is under control.” Grandmother Elf was following them back to the fields, and the moon door they had placed years ago.

“Thank you. Make sure you buy what you need for the school. We will bring our old books, and assignments we still have to help. We will have to wait till the next break to do actual teaching though I think. We want to redo the dungeon levels to push forwards some more.” Auna continued as the others gave excited nods and words of agreement.

“I understand. We can take over the running of everything at least until you are ready to do it. We will do our best to hold off on buying the wood for the school though it might be out of our ability right now.” Grandmother Elf watched the children go back to weeding the farm. “We have been collecting fresh water from the rain cycles on all three floors. Also, we wanted to discuss salt production.”

“Salt production?” Auna asked as the other kids wandered away, not wanting to partake in the boring work talk.

“We have a lot of seawater as you know. We could boil the water for salt, or we could put some land aside and carry water to shallow ponds. The sun will evaporate the water and we can rake up the salt. We have a few people with skills that can separate the impurities out of it as well.” Grandmother Elf watched as Ciela came back over shaking her head.

“We don’t have enough land to farm enough for everyone as it is. You want to take some for salt?” Cielas’ words brought more people around.

“She does have a point Grandmother Elf.” Jensen backed up the little farmer with a wink directed at her.

“Salt is a valuable resource though. It can be sold to merchants, used to pressure our fish, clean our mouths, clean cookware, and more. We really want to capitalize on it.” Grandmother Elf pushed forward with her request.

“We live by the ocean, most of our world is covered in it. Salt is only expensive in the landlocked territories. It is not a gold mine for resale.” Jensen countered.

“This is the Kingdom of Jules right?” Grandmother Elf asked.

“Yes ma’am.” Jensen answered.

“As one of the biggest countries on the biggest land mass it has a salt production problem. Especially for the inner territories. Don’t many ocean-adjacent territories only produce what their territory needs because of that very attitude? Sure, we can’t sell large quantities and make huge amounts of money. However, we can make enough to help support us all.” Grandmother Elf finished as the children looked at each other.

“She is not wrong. However, her method is. Why use the limited space inside your dungeon when you have a safe space outside near the ocean? Sure, the islanders might be able to see what is going on, or some bad people might land on shore. However, the islanders would most likely think the Bloodwave or Jade lords are just moving production down due to increased need.” Mateo may be smarter than we think. Mr. Voice approved the plan.

“I think we need to fix the danger issue?” Auna asked the one with the plan.

“There are people with decent levels here. If we set up traps and give them some strong magic crystals it should be okay. They can always escape to the moon door.” Mateo nodded as she spoke thinking it through.

“Then you may start this endeavour. The list of people that can use the moon door will have to double as the salt makers if that is okay.” Auna looked to the grandmother.

“That will work. Can we spend the rest of the day setting up? We need proper boundaries as we don’t know which areas are safe.” Grandmother Elf looked to a few other workers on the farm. “Take over for them.” She was answered with thumbs up and nods.

“Okay let’s go.” Auna patted her clothes off. Heading to the moon door.

After a few hours proper traps, and boundary lines were set up. There were now twenty salt ponds set up. They had made them with earth magic to give a hard rock-like base. This would keep the water from soaking into the sand. The rakes and scopes could then collect the salt. The salt would be washed with fresh water and dried with magic. This could then be ground, or used as is. It would be a lot of work, but at least it would not take away valuable space in their dungeon. The issue was they would not be useable in the winter or the Pada month of rain. They had one month to prove the concept, if proven more salt ponds may be made in the dungeon.