Kazue was full of flicted feelings as she watched the adventuring party set forth to delve into her dungeon. On the oail, this was her dungeon and her creatures, she really wahem to at least have a good showing! On aail, her mom was turning out to be way cooler than she ever thought. On a third tail, her husband was w hard to make this a challenge, and she didn’t want his efforts to go to waste.

  It was a good thing kitsune could t problems on tails instead of on hands. The thought made her want to giggle, but even in her owhat sounded like stress ughter, and repressed it. Which was not an easy thing for her to do, but it wasn’t as bad as usual. Which brought up another point of mixed feelings.

  When Mordecai had asked her to trust him, she’d only given it a moment’s thought. Aside from the fact that over the past several weeks she had fallen for him, she’d also already thrown her lot in with him. In for a copper, in fold. Though it didn’t hurt that she had the security of knowing most of the people there. She knew her husband was clever; a clever person wasn’t going to do something stupid near such a crowd; therefore, he wasn’t doing something stupid. Or at least not the bad sort of stupid, but there was the risk of impulsive-stupid, which she only sidered after she’d had the tea. She was rather familiar with the subjepulsive-stupid on a personal level.

  She hadn’t noticed what the tea was doing until Mordecai had asked her how she was feeling, which caused Kazue to take a moment to refle how she was feeling. Which was to say, she was feeling great, and that in itself was kind of scary. Mostly because she didn’t know why she was feeling great. And if she didn't know to analyze what and how she was thinking, it's easy not to notice what her mind was doing. Her core and avatar had already split their focus to different things, yet her head didn’t hurt while keeping track of versations, and she didn't o retreat into her thoughts to recover from the effort. It was still kind of tiring, but it was tolerable, and it didn’t make her feel quite so fuzzy-headed.

  Which meant she was entirely free to pay attention to both what Mordecai was doing and what was going on with the party itself, and still keep track of the versation with the Matr-, er, with Aia. Though by the time the party had decided to take a short break for the fourth floor, she was feeling it wear off, and leaned into Mordecai to quietly ask, “Um, that tea you made for me earlier, could I have another?”

  He looked over at her thoughtfully, and she could feel him weighing options. “Is it feeling noisy again?” Kazue nodded mutely. She felt embarrassed, though she couldn’t have told anyone why she was embarrassed. And ‘fuzzy’ seemed more accurate to her, but she could see someone else call it noisy. Which left her w how he knew.

  Even more puzzled was Moriko, who was stuck watg the two of them talk about a subjedirectly without havi bee in oopic. But with a guest it wasn’t time to get into any of it, so he simply made a cup for her and ha over. This time she watched the creation of the brew carefully, and made note of its ingredients. She blinked. It wasn’t that hard to make, and she was able to backfill the ceptual process to create it. Start with a blend of about 90% tea leaves, plus a few other herbs noted for helping with alertness such as ginseng and ginger, brew a big pot of it, make it strong, then just remove a lot of the water. Add hoo pensate for the taste, whily helped so much.

  That was it? Just a trated wake-up brew? OK, not ‘just’, she wasn’t sure how most people would be able to trate it that much without burning it. But that was all it took to make her head feel more like when she was zoned in? And how the hells did he know? She had so many questions, but she still only had two 'minds', and one o focus oertaining their guest while the other was keeping track of what was going on in the rest of the dungeon. So for the moment she just tried to sip at her bitter brew. At least she could make her own now and as a direct copy. Mordecai was the one who had spent time bringing the cept ien their shared information.

  “What is going on with you three?” Aia asked with a sigh. “If you speak of it of course.” Mordecai and Moriko looked towards their guest, but Kazue could feel that the decision weighed on her. It was her issue after all. She only hesitated a moment.

  “It’s plicated, and I o take some time to figure it out. Depending upon what I learn, I may call upon you when I to talk about it. But right now it is private, sorry. It just o be dealt with quickly.” Kazue said. The dark-haired ail tilted her head to the side as she gave Kazue a curious look, briefly being The Matriarch again. It made Kazue nervous, but she was able to keep herself restraio just flickering her ears slightly, and refused to fill in the silence.

  “Very well, I apologize f, but seeing all three of you distracted when other things are happening is a little ing.” Her expression softened as she spoke. “I would be happy to lend aer if you choose.”

  Kazue held back from sighing in relief and ged the topistead. “So, Mordecai love, what’s the game pn? You are too petitive to let this go, but I have to admit they are kind of trashing the pce.” This sort of stuff was very muot her forte, but she also khat she o learn it.

  He smiled in response. “I haven’t fully formed all of my ideas yet, but I know where I want to start. I want to fill in two of our boss spots. Horace for our sed fourth-floor boss, and our stony friend for our sed raid boss. I know more about what I want to do with ah elemental, I’ve been thinking about it since he came to us, but I am open to ideas with Horace, assumiher you nor Horace have any objes.”

  Kazue pulled an absolute bnk on anything special to have her librarian do in an actual fight. His ability to eject people from the library was a fun of her io enforce the rules that were part of the challenge. Her mind briefly bouo thinking about how focused Mordecai had been about ‘i’ retly, but then she yanked her thoughts ba track. “I’m OK with it. I’ll ask Horace, you talk to the elemental.”

  She closed her eyes briefly to send her mental query to the utan, and after some sideration got an affirmative ‘ook’. That made her pause a sed in fusion. Apes were already rather smart creatures, and she was certain that the upgrades she’d given him should enable him to physically speak, and thus more than capable mentally. Was he just choosing not to? She shook that off and opened her eyes.

  “He says yes. Well, ‘ook’, but I’m pretty certain it’s a yes.” Mordecai raised an eyebrow, and she just shrugged to show her fusion.

  “OK then.” Mordecai replied, “Well, I’ve also gotten an affirmation, and I’ve named him Enki. He’s soaking up the mana pool for his slot and growing right now, and I’ve made sure to emphasize the traits I want for him, hat he flow unimpeded through all stone, including worked stone and dungeon stone. Outside of that, I suspect he’s mostly going to be brute strength at first, though I am sure he’ll develop more abilities as we all grow stronger.”

  He leaned forward over the table where his illusion was dispyed and moved it to show the boss room for the library. “Given his abilities, Enki has aire floor to hide under, and pop up at the right time to nd surprise attacks. It’s hard for people to look up and down at the same time. But while Biblios out in the open is fine for a weaker group, with three strong spell casters he’d be bsted out of the air quickly. So I want to also develop some cover for Biblios, and ie Horato the fight. So I am opening the floor to ideas before I talk about my own, I don't want to cut off any thoughts.”

  The four of them looked at the illusion in silence for a little while. Aia robably not going to give any of her thoughts, she had a bit of a flict of i here. And Kazue was ing up bnk trying to figure out what sort of special powers she’d want to give ao bee a boss. She had a feeling that making him bigger would just make things worse here.

  “Oh, I have an idea!” Moriko said with suddeement animating her. “So, in addition tur training, we ofte some opportuo spar with various masters assing through. This is to say, we ‘trade pointers’ by gettien up, and hopefully mao learn something in the process. And to be fair, most of us do. Anyway, one of them was the crazy old dude who had mastered Moyle. And not just ground fightiher. The arena for him ut together with a lot of our climbing exercise equipment plus extra scaffolding put together just for this. We were given a day to get used to fighting in the arena, and it was clear that this guy wasn’t going to be staying on the ground, so we got used to climbing everything as best we could. Didn’t matter. That man could swing through there like he was an actual monkey. Bastard broke my nose when he swung down for a kick, the go of his ‘branch’ while he still had momentum, pushing me back before he used me as a unch point to jump up to a different branch.” She shook her head with a rueful smile. “It was a bst, but I’m thankful for healing magic, or I’d probably have a crooked nose.”

  Kazue was having trouble visualizing it exactly, but Mordecai was smiling evilly, so she khat she was going to find out, and moments ter she could feel Mordecai begin to reshape the Annex. While he did so, Moriko tio talk about the visiting master. “He was amazing. Our masters sent us into the arena in groups of ten, 15 minutes apart, or whe trainee went down, whichever happened first. Lots of people tried to form defensive groups to buy time a our numbers build, but I don’t think any group ever hit the 15-minute mark. He had the best stories too. Apparently, he met a group of awakened apes and monkeys who were studying in a far-off monastery on another ti. Given how perfect his fighting style was, I could almost believe his tales. Though I am pretty certain he was ribbing us ohing, he cimed the head monk of the monastery was a silver-baamed Ki.”

  There was a heartbeat of stunned silence as that awful puled into pce, and Kazue burst into giggle fits. “Oh gods above, that has to be a joke, right? Like, no druid would actually do that to a creature they awakened, would they?” Ki, the ape monk. The idea was ridiculous. Mordecai only shook his head in amusement while he tinued his work, and Aia sighed, l her fato her hands.

  Moriko grinned. “I know, I am with you on that. But he swore up, down, and sideways that it was true. We tried to get him drunk to see if he’d ge his tune, but the man could guzzle fermented drake’s bahout blinking an eye.” She snorted. “Mixed advantage of our training I guess. Harder to poison, but harder to enjoy a drink too.”

  While she was talking, Mordecai had finished modifying the Annex, growing branches between the bookcases in a plicated pattern, but as he did so Kazue noticed him doing something else as well, creating covered interses and tying them together. Not physically, but… she turhe full attention of her core there and watched ... something being ected. Language was failio describe the es, but as she watched her core instinctively analyzed what he was doing, and she felt herself abs mathematical cepts she’d never heard of. It itched. Specifically, it made her core itch. That was new, not to mentioremely unpleasant, and irely accurate sihe core didn’t have nerves, but once again nguage failed to give her a word, and itch described so many physical aal sensations already.

  He also ected the work of interses to a dozen points in newly carved tunnels behind the bookcases. But these were a little different, they drifted randomly throughout the tunnels. “What is up with those e points? And why does that set drift randomly, and why are they set behind the bookcases instead of in the arena?”

  Mordecai chuckled softly “Well, this is me testing my limits. What I’ve done is ect these points,” here he highlighted the spots on the map for Moriko and Aia to see, “so that they are spatially adjat. It’s irely a hing for us, you touched on this sort of reality-ging when you created the library. The fourth floor is not 5 stories below the third, yet the library fits just fine. Don’t look at all of it, higher dimensional math is ohing, actually seeing in higher dimensions as a creature that exists in our three spatial dimensions is another.”

  Mordecai’s words made Kazue start, as that was exactly what she was about to do. At first she was thinking he just knew her that well, but then she made a different e. “Oh, you did that before didn’t you?”

  “Guilty as charged, though that was in my inal dungeon, and I had ten floors at the time. My core had a headache for a week. No, don’t ask me how that works, as far as I tell I never figured that o. That was one of the memories I kept as a warning, I would be so annoyed if I experiehat again, then recovered the memory that could have preve. But as for the random ones, it offsets things a bit. It does make it harder for the party to figure out which bookshelf Horace might be behind, but it also makes it harder for Horace to have an openily where he wants. Though with suffit time he also just dash through the tunnels. I made sure there are plenty of vertical ses and hand grips everywhere. This way he potentially ambush from behind them as well. Ohe party knows that he move betweeerses, they probably won't think about a differe of locations until Horace uses them.”

  She could well imagine how annoying that would be. Kazue also had ahat might work with this ambush setup. “Oh, Mordecai, I had a thought. So, I kind of want Horace to keep the librarian theme, what if he could use books as ons? Maybe throw them or something if someone isn’t close?” Mordecai tilted his head thoughtfully, while Moriko chuckled.

  “I know Horace won’t be up to my old master’s skill, but the idea of throwing that style together with a telep ‘archer’ sounds all kinds of annoying. Not necessarily much more deadly, but frustrating.”

  The monk’s words made Mordecai smile evilly once more. “You are quite right love, it would be. And imagine if he could not only throw heavy tomes, but ink as well? And I don’t just mean ink, I mean any ink.” Moriko looked a touch fused, but his e Kazue’s mind rag, and she could see from Aia’s expression that the matriarch was following the same of thought.

  There were a lot of things that were sidered inks. The liween ink and paint was a lot blurrier than most people thought, it mostly was about what surface it was going to be applied to. And there were a lot of different types of paper too. And then there were special ink positions done for various symbols, religious or are. She could feel her core analyzing all her memories of doing art and calligraphy at the temple, expanding the cept of ink as far as it could and cross-refereng with the materials avaible to them.

  Kazue also felt Mordecai act while her mind raced with possibilities, officially assigning Horace as their sed fourth-floor boss and feeding his i for a bined monk and projectile slinger, plete with an image of a satchel oher side. Then the node pulled that i from them, bining their ideas together into a new whole as it merged with Horace’s form, drawing an evil smile from her to match Mordecai's. “Oh, I ’t wait to see what that’s going to be like!”

  The process had made her a bit dizzy actually, but she was excited to have been more directly part of the boss-making process like that. Unfortunately, that was going to be a while still, which Mordecai was quick to point out. “Sihat isn’t going to happen soon, I have ahing I want to work on. I wao make a special version of the staff for your mother. She may be wreg the pce, but she’s also dumping a ton of mana into it. Besides, she’s my mother-in-w, I think I py favorites a little bit.”

  As she and Mordecai started getting to work, Kazue couldn’t help but overhear Moriko sigh and turn to Aia. “I love them both, but they get ed up in this. I get it, and I am happy to tribute where I , but times like this there isn’t a lot for me to do. I don’t suppose you happen to have a suitable bat style for a spar? They’d barely notice as long as we don’t break anything.”

  The ail ughed softly. “I’m afraid not. Oh, if it came down to it, I hold my own in close quarters against most foes, but I am another spell specialist. Hmm, if you stop by the etime, I introduce you to my son. He runs the monastery side of the religious orders. I’m sure he’d be just as happy to trade some pointers with you as your old masters were.”

  The exge did make Kazue feel a little bit guilty, but it was really iing to see the stuff Mordecai was doing too, and for once she wasn’t feeling burnt out and wao take full advantage of it.

  Zagaroth