"Will running Zone 1 really take several days?" Leif asks as we leave the house.

I'm in my usual outfit plus the gloves I wear when preparing for combat, while Leif is wearing his standard one for going around town right now. It consists of a pair of brown pants, a dark green tunic with a brown sash around his waist, and a pair of dark brown leather boots. He looks pretty cute in it and I'm sure he knows that.

The sun has barely begun to rise but we're already making or way to the Dungeon right now. I want to get an early start for several reasons, not the least of which is how large the Dungeon is.

"Yeah," I answer. "It's a little bit more than ten miles or so just to reach the closest Boss Area in Zone 1. A normal traveling group might walk that far in a day, accounting for pacing to avoid burning out or over-extending one's body, a break for lunch, potential pit stops, and not leaving first thing in the morning but taking time to wake up and eat and break down camp, then factoring in setting up camp and eating in the evening."

"Isn't that for normal traveling?" Leif frowns. "And only if you're traveling in areas without a place to stay the night, too?"

"Yeah," I say. "But keep in mind that this is also a Dungeon, Leif. We'll also have to fight monsters as we cross that distance. Though we might be leaving early, it could take us until sunset just to reach the Boss Area even if we did it as a straight shot there. I want to train up my magical ability a little first, but also to check out some stuff. There's a lake in the first Zone, for example."

"Really?"

"Yep," I answer. "More than one, actually, but we aren't going to spend that long in the Dungeon."

There are also lakes in the second and third Zones as well.

"Huh," he says. "I never went into our Holy Dungeon and haven't heard much about it, so don't know what it's like."

"We can ask Light when he comes to take you home."

"Yeah… there's a reason the Fairy Gates are hidden," Leif tells me. "He has a strong hatred of non-fairies, and it's based on centuries of experience of humans, beastkin, elves, dwarfs, demihumans, and so on catching us and using us for rituals or whatever. Unlike you guys, our bodies are made of magic and that sort of makes it a prime material for a lot of things."

"So I'll have to ask nicely, got it."

Leif sighs but decides not to press on this thing about his king further.

We reach the massive stone building that's the headquarters for the Amadikol's Dungeon Guild and enter it. Leif looks around a little nervously as we start to make our way to the room with the Dungeon Gate in it, then tugs on my tunic a little.

"Jamie," he whispers. "Are you sure Adam and your house will be fine while you're in the Dungeon? You did mention it's known to take awhile."

"Yeah," I respond without bothering to whisper. "Taking action against my house or Adam for any reason can be rooted back to something that violates the Divine Laws, and the gods were pretty clear about that. When you consider that the gods did it in response to Adam being refused entry into the city, it can be assumed that they're watching this particular situation rather closely. Screw up again, and the town may just find its water supply dried up or the soil in their farm buildings no longer fertile regardless of how much it's replaced or fed with magic."

That's just from what the normal gods might do to this place. I don't know the God of Mysteries all that well but do know enough that I can say he'd do something pretty drastically different.

"Doesn't mean people might not try it anyway," Leif says. "People can be pretty dumb sometimes."

"Yeah," I say. "People can be pretty dumb. Don't worry, things will be fine."

We've reached the area for entering the Holy Dungeon. A city like this has a higher-than-normal percentage of adventurers than others would so there's usually a line first thing in the morning. That's why I had Leif wake up a little earlier than first-thing.

You can't get stuck in a line if you show up before the line.

The Dungeon Gate for the Holy Dungeon is made up of medium-grey stones, but otherwise looks pretty much like the other three Dungeon Gates I've seen so far. I step through it without any issues and find myself in a grassy field. The grass here grows around a foot and a half in height, which is a little problematic but we'll make do.

Despite it being more than ten miles away, we can see the mountain that sits past the end of Zone 1. Something we normally wouldn't be able to see from here on Earth or this world. The Dungeon is flat rather than curved, however, so the ground doesn't get in the way of the view. That said, the mountain's still far enough that it's more faint on the horizon than clear, with a blue tint to its base and snow-capped peaks.

Between here and there, I can see the occasional tree, boulder, and rock structure. This place is mapped out well enough that a larger map for the Zone actually includes every single one of those. With as much money as I have, buying comprehensive maps wasn't an issue for me, but I won't be relying on maps for most of this.

I know the general area and where I want to go, and will rely on that unless we get lost. Only then will we whip out the map to use, unless we want to discuss checking out another feature. A Holy Dungeon really is extensive and even a simple Zone has a lot of things in it. That probably comes with the territory of being massive, unlike the Dungeons in Ratton or Caniton.

Another thing I can see here and there are birds soaring through the sky or a deer standing or wandering around. The monsters are largely solo, so fights likely won't involve more than one beast at a time early on.

"Fairies have good senses, right?" I ask as Leif enters the Dungeon.

"No," he answers. "Our senses are only about the same as a human's."

"I mean magically," I clarify. "Like, you're good at sensing magical energy and presences, right? I read that the other day but wasn't too sure how accurate the tome was."

"Oh," he says. "Yes on sensing presences, and sensing magical energies requires [Mana Sense] same as you, and we have to train it up. But we're generally better at other enlightened species at training it up due to our bodies being attuned with magic already."

"How good at your at sensing snakes?"

"Depends on how weak their presence is," he answers. "A normal snake, I'd probably have to be focusing a bit to sense. Magical ones would take less focus, and if it's a decently-strong one, I could sense it without trying. That's for presences. I'm fairly decent at sensing Mana, and as long as it has more than about 15-20 Mana, I can passively sense a person or being from about thirty feet away."

"Really?" I ask. "Huh. I should improve my [Mana Sense] a bit more, then. Alright, then that won't work for now. You mentioned in the bath last night that you actually do know more than just the creation and manipulation of the elements?"

"Yes," Leif tells me. "Just a few of the basic spells, nothing combat-focused. I wanted to come here to train up [Mystic Beast Summoning] a bit. Er, wait, if we're only doing the first Zone. Oh, well."

"The normal scaling in Zone 1 is up to 40 Might," I tell him. "Then up to 80 Might for Zone 2, increasing by the same every Zone here. This place has apparently had several upgrades in the last two months. As in, it upgraded toughness factor, then added in a sixth Zone, then upgraded toughness factor again."

That's not the real reason for Zone 1's higher difficulty level towards the end. In reality, that's the Dungeon's base level of power and upgrades bump it up by half. As a result, Zone 1 requires about 60 Might at the end while Zone 2 requires about 120 Might at the end. Then when a new Zone is added, it gets dropped back down to the original scaling.

Which is how they knew that Zone 6 exists – and also Zone 7, which appeared while I was dealing with the guards at the entrance to the city. In the time I've been on this world, this Holy Dungeon has received four upgrades after spending centuries with less than that. I can't help but wonder if the God of Mysteries has something to do with that.

"So it's tougher than normal in here?" Leif asks.

"No," I tell him. "It drops back down when new Zones are added, and there's a seventh one now. What basic spells do you know?"

"Er… pretty much all of them?" He answers. "Just at a higher Skill Level than you due to having trained them longer. They're all around Level 5."

"Alright," I say. "One of the monsters here is a creature called a crimson field viper. The early ones don't have very much Mana, so you won't be able to sense them based on what you said."

Adam and Caleb would be able to hear them moving around, and probably smell them as well. Sadly, we don't have either, so alternative measures will need to be taken. Fortunately, I didn't come here alone which means I don't have to spend as much Mana on a way to make it easier to detect their approach.

"Unless you want to summon Evisalb to deal with scrubs," I say. "You'll be in charge of clearing the grass."

"Clearing the grass?" Leif answers.

"Yeah," I gesture with my right hand and blue-tinted wind swirls out.

My conjured wind flows down to the grass, becoming thin, arc-shaped blades of compressed air that spin about around us, quickly cutting down the grass. I clear out a space thirty feet from us in all directions.

"That cost a lot of Mana for me," I say. "Since I'm still relatively new to this and have very little Mana at the moment. You have more Mana, a higher regen, and a lower cost for creating and manipulating air or with using the [Air Disk] spell. That was a modified version of it to turn it into arcs with sharp edges. Would you be able to maintain that to cut the grass down thirty feet in the direction we're walking at all times? But keep it as a ring around us as well in order to strike any of the snakes that draw close?"

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"Yeah," Leif answers. "And I guess doing it that way would be better than the actual spell."

"Huh?"

"The [Air Arc] spell," he says. "That's essentially what you just did, but not as the proper spell. You were still using [Air Disk]. Well, not even that since you created it as wind first, then shifted it to compressed air, then shaped it."

"Huh," I say. "Didn't know that was a thing. I can provide [Mana Potion]s as needed. So you can do it?"

"Sure," he says. "How close to the ground should I do it?"

"How fine is your control?"

"Within a tenth of an inch of where I want."

"Between an eighth and a quarter of an inch above the ground," I tell him. "The vipers will have to go over it that way, but they're long enough that they can't just completely avoid it if we're moving."

Leif nods, then gestures with both hands. Ten thin disks of compressed air form, then reshape into two-foot-long arcs that are even thinner than before. He spreads out his arms and the disks soar down to the ground and move to thirty feet away from us, rapidly spinning around in a circle around us. The experienced, stronger mage is able to move the spells at a higher speed than I can, which will work even better for dealing with the vipers than if I were doing this. Now that my own arcs are no longer needed, I dismiss them.

I also hand Leif some potions from my cuff, which he ties to his sash using ribbons that seemed to come out of nowhere. At the very least, I don't know where he was storing there or where he pulled them from. Those potions should be enough to hold him over for at least the next hour or so as long as he sips them instead of wasting the Mana that they recover.

"If I'm doing this," Leif drops his hands to his sides. "Then what are you going to be killing?"

"There are three main monsters for the fields," I tell him. "The first of them is the vipers. Second up are magical hawks that fire stone needles with flaps of their wings or later on, sonic screeches and gusts of wind. Some of the later ones can even summon dust storms. Minor annoyances, based on what I heard."

"So you'll be fighting those?"

"Yeah," I answer. "And the deer monsters as well. There are two varieties: earth and air. They create orbs of stone or compressed air or arcs of their element like the ones you're using to clear the grass, then fire them off at their target. Stronger ones have miniature versions of the arcs swirling around their bodies when they attack. That's actually how I got the idea to reshape the disks. Guess I should've realized it was an actual spell, huh?"

"Everyone goofs up a bit sometimes," Leif chuckles. "So the only real difference between them is which element they use?"

"Not quite," I tell him. "The deer with earth magics shake the ground as they charge at you. They're a little bit fast since they're deer, but it's manageable as long as you're dodging or have a solid defense set up. With my stats, I'm a little bit faster than the early ones."

"So the trick is to take them down or disable them before they reach you."

"Yup," I say. "And that goes more so for the air-attuned deer. Those boost their charging speed with wind magics, making them even faster. They'll be the tricky ones."

"So what's the plan?" Leif asks.

"First," I point off to our left and a little north. "We go that way. I want to check out the lake over there. Supposedly, it has giant frogs though it's around ten miles from here so the trip will take most or all of the day. By the time we reach it, I should be a little bit of a higher Level. Enough that I can take those beasts on."

"Levels don't come that fast," Leif says.

"They do for me."

"Jealous."

I snort and start walking. He's just accepting what I'm saying without question even though he's not seen too much of my actual abilities and despite knowing that I'm a trained physical fighter. Based on what Martin told me yesterday, then Leif should know I can't be that talented with magic. Yet he accepts that I've learned spells already and that I can gain Levels quickly without question. Either he's hiding his doubt and confusion very well or he's fully aware of how ridiculous the Summoned can be.

"Can I ask what the Fairy Realm is like?" I ask.

"Hm…" Leif thinks for a few moments.

"I'll take that as a hard 'no'," I say.

"It's not that," he says. "The Fairy Realm used to be much bigger. It's a series of islands connected by the roots and branches of a tree – some in the water, some floating in the sky. You can either walk or fly between the islands, though some require flight. Many of the creatures there, monster and animal alike, can bear similarities to ones in this world, but with some slight changes that make them distinctly of the Fairy Realm."

"Back up a bit," I say. "Islands connected by roots and branches of a tree?"

"The same tree," he nods. "The Great Spirit Tree. It's very sacred to us and is immense beyond belief. Dozens of miles in height and more than a mile in diameter. Its roots and branches stretch far and only Light has ever flown even more than a third of the way up it, it's so immense. He says that normally, you can't even go that high in normal flight because of the lack of air and how cold it gets. 'The void of space starts to take form' are his words, though I don't know what that means."

"But you can with the Great Spirit Tree?" I ask.

"Yes," Leif nods. "It's immense beyond belief and 'fixes' the air and atmosphere within its reach. While you can just rest on branches when you need to if flying that high up, there's no real point to it. Everything we need is lower down and it just drives you further from others. Though Light does claim that there are some fairies that live higher up, no one's entirely sure if he's serious or just screwing with people."

"Ah."

"The islands are mostly forested, too," Leif tells me. "And with the hundreds of them that exist, it's easy even for a fairy to get lost. My brother probably thinks I'm sulking on one of them right now, there's one specific one I usually go to after we have an argument. It won't be until he comes to look for me to apologize that he realizes I'm gone and reports it."

"You make him apologize by vanishing until he comes to do it?" I ask. "That… sounds a little toxic. Sorry."

"No," Leif shake his head. "My brother's a little too protective of me and our fight was regarding that. I wanted to challenge myself in a Dungeon rather than do some easy grinding and he was vehemently against it and said some… rather unfair things. So I flew off to cool down before I said something that we both regretted and when I do that, I have a tendency to lose track of time. If he wasn't in the wrong, then he'd come look for me to try and talk with me about it to show me why I was wrong."

"Ah," I say. "That's better. "What are the islands like?"

"Forested, mostly," he answers. "Some grassy areas, some lakes and rivers and waterfalls. The Fairy Realm is absolutely brimming with magical energy and it's created a pretty unique environment. Light claims to have even traveled to worlds other than this one and not seen a place like the Fairy Realm."

The kind of the fairies has traveled to other worlds? Is that something he can do by his own power or something that the gods allowed or even caused?

"Fairies can go to other worlds, too?" I ask.

"Hm…" Leif thinks for a few moments. "I'm honestly not sure. Light controls the Fairy Gates and he's the oldest of all fairies, as I told you before. He can alter their destinations as he pleases, so it's possible that he's deliberately chosen for them to open only to this world. All of his tales of going to other worlds stems from a time before the birth of the next-oldest fairy, too. So I would say it's possible that the Fairy Gates can open to any world within a certain range of wherever it's at."

"What do you mean?" I ask. "The 'wherever it's at' part, I mean."

"The Fairy Realm isn't a world on its own," he says. "Though the islands are situated on an ocean that stretches endlessly, monsters growing stronger and stronger the further you travel to deter people from actually reaching the boundaries of it. No one really knows where it is other than that it's not located on any world. One theory is that it's a pocket dimension a god created for us to live in, another is that it's actually floating through space and the Great Spirit Tree creates the world-like atmosphere for us."

"And you?" I ask.

"I'm not sure," he shrugs. "Light's always been evasive when I ask which means that… there's something to the realm that he knows but doesn't want anyone else to."

Leif contemplates the question a little more.

"I honestly can't come up with an explanation," he admits. "Light is especially cryptic. I do think our realm is actually on a world – just that the magical energy levels of that world are so high that it's difficult for life like humanity or beastkin or whatnot to take hold. We live in the shelter of the Great Spirit Tree but outside of that are monsters of absurd levels of power. Imagine a wolf with the might of a dragon, then imagine that as a normal wolf. That's the equivalent of a common monster for the waters around our land once you leave the protection of the Great Spirit Tree."

"Damn," I say. "So a world like that would be a place where even a Ranker couldn't survive?"

"More than likely," he nods. "You'd need to be at least Rank 2 or even Rank 3 to survive outside of the shelter of the Great Spirit Tree. In fact, the ambient levels of magical energy in the air alone requires you to be at least Rank 1 at a minimum just for your body to survive it. We fairies can despite not being that strong at base only because we're made of magic, ourselves."

"Wait," I say. "Then how were you kidnapped?"

"That's outside of the protection of the Great Spirit Tree," he says. "The protection provided by the Great Spirit Tree doesn't just weaken the monsters there, it also enables those within it to survive the absurd levels of magical energy without having their bodies eroded to nothing."

"Ah."

"As for why the Fairy Gates only lead to this world… I think that's because Light likes the gods of this world," he tells me. "I might only be twenty years of age, but I know him well enough to know that he'd prefer to only interact with worlds whose gods he likes, even if they're silent or missing."

"Makes sense," I say. "Monster incoming."

A deer with a stone-grey pelt and stone-grey antlers is approaching us from the direction we're walking. Hostility fills the monster's eyes as a three-inch orb of stone begins to form in front of its antlers.

The monsters this early take a few seconds to cast their spells and I spent a decent portion of yesterday practicing to reduce the cast for my bolts to nearly instant. I don't give the monster a chance to finish casting its [Stone Orb] to launch at me, a blue-tinted [Air Bolt] soaring through the air. My spell smashes into the orb and shatters it. The impact performs enough damage to the bolt to destroy it as well, the blue tint fading as the compressed air dissipates, joining the air of the Dungeon.

I've already sent a second [Air Bolt] on the way, which soars straight into the deer's forehead. Skin and blood burst out a little, though the attack wasn't enough to break its skull. The second [Air Bolt] to strike the beast deals a little bit more damage, and the third breaks the rest of the way through the bone and into the monster's skull.

Another thing I worked on yesterday was my aim and I feel I've gotten pretty good at it. Even the monster's small flail after the first of the three hit it wasn't enough to affect my aim too much. Shame these spells can't track a target, though. If they could I probably could have had them all hit the same exact spot rather than roughly the same spot.

I check the notification as I approach the monster's remains.

+0.87% [Elemental Wizard] Experience!

"A decent gain," I say as I close the notification. "Depending on how things go, I should be able to reach Level 2 in [Elemental Wizard] by lunch."

"Seriously?" Leif asks.

"Yeah," I answer. "I gain Experience a little bit more quickly than others in Dungeons, it's one of the effects of my Skills from being a Summoned. Even being a little above a monster in terms of strength doesn't slow me down that much. I need a bigger gap, but the main source of Experience for me has been Dungeons. With how many monsters they have in them, I can make up for a lesser amount from a large gap in power."

Simply by killing more monsters. If I'm only gaining 0.1% Experience per kill and there are over a hundred monsters that I can reach in under five minutes… then I just gained 1% Experience or more in just five minutes.

"Huh," Leif says. "That's… yeah, I can see you doing that instead of working with a team."

"Speaking of teams," I say. "Party members of mine also gain a buff to Experience gains while we're in a Dungeon."

"Wait, seriously?"

"Yup."

In theory, at least.

"That explains why I got more Experience for [Elemental Wizard] than I expected with the viper kills."

"You did kill some?"

"Yeah," he answers.

"Should've told me," I say. "We can use the looting trick on them to gain some loot to sell in town. In fact, I'm about to do that for this beast. Er, well, I would, but I should probably wait until after I kill the hawk, huh?"

"What hawk?"

"That one," I point at a hawk soaring towards us. "Outside of your sensing range, it seems. Wanna make a bet on how many attacks I need to send off before I kill it?"