“Shall we start with personal stuff and then move on to dungeon information?” Mordecai began. The three of them had pulled up chairs around a small table. Kazue and Moriko looked at each other, then nodded.

  “Yes please, I’d like to know what is going on in my head. And why did that trated tea help?” Kazue sounded frustrated, and he couldn’t bme her for that.

  “trated tea? That’s it?” Moriko asked in fusion upon learning that the drink was such a simple-sounding brew.

  “To be clear,” Mordecai replied, “It was aremely trated form of the sort of te-night tea someone uses in order to stay awake. As for why it helped, that is more than I fully expin, or even know myself right now. But the simple version of it is that some part of Kazue’s brain is not getting enough of something it needs. When the body needs food, it gets hungry, and you find food to eat. When the body needs water, you get thirsty and go find something to drink. When the brain is low on something it needs, it seeks what will fulfill that need. Does that make sense?”

  He paused for a moment and tinued when they eaodded. “The flesh influehe mind. If it did not, then alcohol would not ge people’s thinking or temperament. Certain training mitigate the demands of the flesh, redug the impact of this influence, but not ing it. And perhaps such training might help you, Kazue, except the demands of your brain are exactly what would prevent you from pleting such training. It would be like taking a starving man and trying to teach him how to fast safely before you made him healthy.” Using Moriko’s training seemed like a good way to create analogies they would both uand.

  “Kazue, your need be mostly summarized as ‘stimution’, though that’s somewhat inplete. Or rather, stimution is what gives you what you hat most people produough of. Sort of like how there are people who get anemic if they do meat on a pretty much daily basis, and others go without meat just fine, ahers are sied by eati. It’s just an individual need. Without knowing this was what was driving you, it’s why you often have trouble staying focused oask or thought. Something new is always more stimuting than something you’ve been doing for a while.” He smiled slightly. “Though sometimes a situation be stimuting enough to make up for the ck of newness.”

  “But that is where the drink I made for you es in. Instead of stimution through a, you be stimuted by what you eat or drink. And when your brain is satisfied, it no longer makes demands on your attention. That’s why you became calmer after drinking a brew that would have left many other people vibrating and shaking. They’d bee overstimuted, you bee just enough stimuted. Though I have to admit to a bit of a cheat here. I don’t have to worry about the long-term effects on your body, as any damage resets at the same time the rest of our dungeon does. Which is good, because your heart rate is nearly double what it should be right now.”

  Kazue started, the at her wrist to find her pulse. “Huh. Why didn’t I notice this earlier?”

  “Because you otherwise felt calmer, and you have no other symptoms, such as breathing faster. But this is also where I am hoping Moriko’s parents will be able to help. You will eventually be able te an avatar that leave the dungeon, but there’s no practical way to make that tea outside of here, and an avatar outside of the dungeon does not be from that daily reset. There should be something they provide that will help your focus without quite the same effects on your body.” He couldn’t help but grima frustration. “I am pretty certain that I used to know a good sele of options that I had helped develop for that avatar, but that knowledge seems to be tied with all the knowledge that led up to it, and that’s more than I afford to unfht now.”

  “Er, Mordecai? What are you talking about?” Moriko asked while Kazue tilted her head, trying to puzzle out if this was something she should know about.

  “Ah, sorry. I skipped some details there. So, going back a bit, I have mentioned before that most of my memories are not avaible. There just isn’t enough room in our current core for all of them. When Kazue was having trouble with fog earlier and had her core take over for her avatar, it prompted me to take a fresh look at everything we already know about Kazue. It was a key piece that brought a puzzle together that I didn’t even realize we had. But for my avaible knowledge, it was only enough that something was off, and give me a traore knowledge. That trace led to me unfolding some of the memories of my first gnome avatar, as my attempt to recreate their generally eic physiology aality was not quite correctly done ao the same issues Kazue has. I did my best to only get the information I needed, but whatever I did to create this folded information also makes it harder to get just what I want, as everything is ected, and I ’t refold anything I make avaible for myself.”

  “I -what?” Kazue asked while Moriko looked at him like he’d grown a sed head.

  Mordecai shook his head. “Sorry, I am dumping too much detail at ohough he retty certain Kazue would be able to pick up the teical aspects a bit faster than Moriko, there was a lot of background involved that her of them had yet. “I pull some of the memories I want, but they always e with more than what I want, and I only have so mu, so I have to be careful. That’s why I don’t know as much as I would like to help. But it’s enough for us to seek help, depending on how much Kazue wants to tell others.”

  “Oh. Hmm.” Kazue thought about it for a bit, then nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s okay to tell her parents. I see why I might not want to spread it around, but I don’t see any reason to hide it from them, especially if they help.”

  “Alright, we work out the details on that ter. I would just like to finish by noting that we should probably limit you to two of those trated cups each day. The same reset that will fix any damage will also prevent any specific tolerances from exposure to build up, and three cups will probably be unfortable and not actually be helpful anymore. It’s up to you, but that’s my reendation."

  The kitsune nodded, looked to Moriko whed, and then looked baordecai. “Okay, I guess that’s all I really o know for the moment, though it’s kind of frustrating to not know why my head is like this, but if you figured out more in a previous avatar, I am sure we find a way to look into it more in this lifetime.” She smiled a little and sighed. “Well, I guess onto dungeon stuff? Um, two things I think. This m you were starting to say something about breach powers, and tely you’ve seemed focused on ‘i’. What’s up with that?”

  Mordecai tapped his a moment as he pulled his thoughts together. “So breaches are a little more plicated than I want to get intht now, and Kazue you should be able to figure out some of it pretty fast just by imagining someone having forced their way down here and about to attack our core. There’s a lot of defensive instinct there. But in brief, it gives you a free refresh as if it was dawn and a temporary boost iure and trap capacity.” He paused and then coughed slightly. “Though it seems like a few more limitations are ihan I remember, such as the threat needing to actively be in the dungeon, and only being able to send overflow monsters out of the dungeon after the breach is dealt with.” Now he sighed softly. “Just, try not to use that extra capacity if you don’t have to. You either have to send them out of the duo live normal lives or despawn them aheir spirits or souls dormant until you have enough capacity t them out properly. her option is perfect, so best to avoid being in that position if you .”

  He shook off those memories and took a breath. “As for my focus on iely, it has to do with our more ret visit from Ozuraold us that he personally structed the rules that guide dungeons. Not only does this mean that these are, hmm, ‘imposed’ rules instead of just integral to our nature, but it also means that they are not meically strict rules. The spirit or i of a bargain or rule is what matters to him more thater. This means with the right i you do things that might be against a striterpretation. My bargain with the matriarch earlier is an example.” Mordecai leaned ba his chair to look upward while he recalled his thought process.

  “It was a bit of experiment, and I think it may hat step-by-step stru, but my i was to wind up at the same p the bargain. I took what should have been two separate trades and bihem into orade. I wao trade staffs for a high-pressure water entment, and then I wao trade even more staffs to get two of the first set back with more entments. Previously I would have pleted the first trade, which would rehe first set of staves fully real, and theed the sed trade. What I did was more effit and a little faster, and the agreement part could be pleted immediately, so tomorrow m I give Aia all the staves at ohout having to then begin a new set of bargaining. I am not sure yet of the limits of this, and I io settle in to meditate ter this evening and see if I uh him about the topic, but now that I look at it, everything is ruled by i. The table I created earlier for us all to sit at, I inte to be part of the dungeon, and the mana that makes it up es from the same pool as strug any other part of the dungeon, and isn’t much more expehan if I had just built a pin oak table of the same dimensions, excluding the effort put into designing it. But to make it more than a mana struct, to make it fully real? That would pull mana from our pool for making treasure, and it would cost a lot more. So the more we think about our i, and the clearer we are about our i, the more effit we be, and possibly the more we do.”

  There was also ahing that had started nagging at him about their powers of creation, and art of what he was hoping Ozuran would aer.

  “I guess that makes sense.” Kazue said after a moment, and that made Moriko ugh.

  “I’m sorry, I ’t help it. I get why that would make more seo you, but at this point, it’s holy mostly over my head. I simply ’t experiehe same things you are dealing with, so a lot on this topic is not something I’m ever fully going to get.” She waved her hand to clear away the topic, then took a breath. “However, speaking of wanting to meditate tonight, I wao ask a favor of you two.”

  Zagaroth