Moriko adored her wife and could tell that Kazue had been feeling a little underappreciated when she had waxed ohusiastically about her tea set. So Moriko made sure to fix that by recruiting Mordecai into helpiterly exhaust Kazue’s avatar ter that night. And then they pushed her further until her avatar had passed out and even her core seemed a little stunned from the sensory overload. Only then did Moriko and Mordecai take care of their needs.

  The kitsune seemed rather cheerful the m, and it made Moriko happy to see that her pn had worked out well. Plus, well, it had been fun to see how far they could push Kazue. Of course, they could only afford to do it because of the dawn refresh of the dungeon, allowing all of them to immediately recover.

  After a quick breakfast, Moriko decided to ge her schedule. There were no groups that could make it to the sixth floor via the bat route, at least not within the day, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t find aertai.

  First, she anized some ganthros into ‘adventuring parties’, anizing the parties between all-bunkin, all-rabkin, and mixed groups. These were to challehe sixth floor, where they could train against the river inhabitants. There was no mana to gain here, but there was a differeween power and skill. Skill required training and experience.

  The monk had sidered retaining a sele of them for her own practice, wanting to challenge a group against her on the ke, but decided that would be a bit selfish. Instead, she went up to the first floor and offered both training and spars to aerested. As only three groups could progress through Kazue’s path each day, ohe third group had passed, Moriko could co-opt ses of the first floor for this. And unlike most of the inhabitants, Moriko was not limited by being on the first floor.

  She avoided using the ses that the faeries occupied however. That would have been far too distrag.

  Moriko also offered two es, after double-cheg with her husband and wife. “For those of you ied in training, after I verify your fuals I will focus your training on skills that may help you make your way through the dungeon. For those who feel they are close to making it to the sixth floor, you may want to test yourselves against me. After all, I am currently ag as the sixth-floor boss. And I am the oh experience fighting ierrain there. I’ll also have help, so if you ’t hold up to me alohen even in a group you’ll have difficulty getting past me as the floor boss.” She paused. “Oh, and I reend you don’t wear armor you ’t fix if you spar against me. I am quite capable of damaging armor with my bare hands.” She was wearing a training gi embzoned with the symbol of Sakiya when she issued her offer and challenge, letting people know what they were getting into.

  A few more days of this passed as the Azeria Mountain Dungeon tio plete portions of its various trade tracts. Several of the trades included being offered a sample of a material that the duer produced rge volumes of. The market for certain dyes was going to crash soon. But things got more iing with the arrival of certain parties from Azeria Forest and Riverbridge.

  Mordecai and Kazue had the duty to tinue pying host, even after all the trade iations were done. For ohing, Kazue’s path was easier for most people to plete. In most societies, bat skills were the least developed. For every soldier, there was aire of people involved iing them food and equipment and somepce to sleep, and those people had their own needs and their own families. Even in a heavily armed society where most travelers picked up at least the basics, it was rare for more than one or two pert to develop those skills to a signifit degree.

  Social skills oher hand, everyone hose. And most people learned how to py games as children. So the first few levels just required patiend the ability to learn the rules and a bit of hand-eye coordination.

  The library required patiend the ability to work out puzzles and clues, riddles, or other intellectually challenging games. And Kazue was generous, up several challenges and a group only had to solve five of them.

  The fifth floor was the first oo offer quests that might have a bit of danger. But again, one could take the time to find the challehat were easiest to overe for them. Though at least each person had to actively participate in five different quests to get the token.

  Their sixth floor was at least a signifit step up in challenge. While there were a few ways to bypass specific challehe overall challenge of navigating the river was the same for every group. And while this floor was harder than the previous ones, it too shared the trait of being gradually learnable for most people. There was usually not a clear-cut line of ‘you have beeed’ froup.

  Plus the bat path was much more intimidating, and made most people far more aware of the possibility of death should they not be up to the challenge. So fewer were willing to push themselves as hard.

  They might know that Mordecai and Kazue were being careful, but this was not dissimir to a live steel spar. Acts happen. And the more you push yourself, the higher the risk of an act. So while no one had mao get past the fifth floor on the bat path, a few groups had made it through all of Kazue’s challenges, so the dungeon avatars had celebrations to throw and gifts to give to those groups.

  That dynamic looked like it was about to ge. Mordecai grinned as he noticed two kitsune arrive, and turo Kazue. “Love, will you mind if I leave you to finish hosting this celebration? We have some new guests to wele.”

  Kazue smiled and said, “Of course, go on. We might get a group that test your trials with them at the lead.”

  Mordecai apologized to the guests in front of them for needing to leave in the middle of a feast, then shifted his avatar to the frorance, where he bowed to their guests. “Hello Shizoku, Takehiko. It’s good to see you.” Which was true, even if there was a bit of tensioween him and Takehiko. Mordecai had finally worked out what annoyed him so much about the five-tailed kitsune. While there was nothing wrong with remaining unattached so long as one was ho with their partners, Takehiko dispyed an irritating amount of selfishness in how he went about it. And nothing he’d heard about the man from Kazue had dissuaded Mordecai from that impression.

  After they’d returned his greeting, Mordecai tinued. “As you may have noticed from the caravan outside, we have some muests. I believe you are familiar with Kazue’s father, Ricardo? Well, you missed him and Akahaing married. And the rest of your training group from Riverbridge isn’t here yet, though if everyone is on the same timing they should be arrivioday.”

  Takehiko looked thoughtful. “The old mahe knot? I thought he really did have a girl iown and Akahana was just being hopeful.”

  “Idiot.” Shizoku muttered.

  “What? It makes seo me.”

  Mordecai intervened before the white-haired kitsune could retort. “And not everyone wants the same thing out of life. But that’s a philosophical discussion for aime. Right now I want to discuss the details of this training mission.”

  A few hours ter, Shizoku bowed as Mordecai introduced her to the Riverbridge group. Much as Takehiko had e along to ensure her safety, the other party had two escorts: A dwarf named Brongrim and a half-oramed Nainvil. They had a history with the dungeon acc to Mordecai, and they were not who she was here to train, so most of her attention focused oher three as Mordecai introduced them.

  “This is Alnnia, she is an acolyte studying uraxalim.” He said, gesturing to a slender elven girl with long bck hair. Of course, being an elf, the ‘girl’ robably at least twice Shizoku’s age despite them looking to be about the same age.

  “Ao her is Rika. She’s been training in woodcraft and has developed a knack for a few reted spells.” The half-elf appeared to be ie teens, so Shizoku guessed she was in her early twenties.

  “And finally we have Derek. He’s shown an iing talent for elemental magic, though we are still w on how best t it out sistently. He’s the one who found Enki and vihe earth elemental to travel here from Riverbridge.” The coppery-haired boy shuffled in pce awkwardly and his gaze slid away from hers. Great. The prodigy of unknown talents was shy, looked to be about twelve, he most training, and was going to be the one she was going to be stuck with. Once her stupid cousin reappeared, the two women were probably going to be making eyes at him.

  At least Takehiko had the good taste to be only charming around younger women, and no more. Anyway, time to focus ao it. The sooarted, the sooner done. “It’s a pleasure to meet all of you. While we wait for my cousin to arrive, why don’t we start with Derek?” Aing to work would make it easier to ignore Mordecai. She was just gd that he’d set her up with a book and chair instead of keeping her pany. Shizoku shoved down the feelings that the thought of spending more time with Mordecai brought up. “How did you unicate with Enki?”

  “Um, well, he wasn’t called Enki at the time,” Derek said, and Shizoku bit ba impatient ent. Hopefully, the boy wouldn’t take too long to answer what she’d actually asked. “He didn’t have any name, I think. But when Miss Moriko asked us to find samples, and that living ones would be best, I kind of thought that she meant that rocks could be living too, so I wao find one for her.”

  He shrugged as he tinued. “So I wandered around for a while, and decided to try calling out for one, kind of like how you might call a cat. And a bit ter, I heard him answer. I mean, he didly speak, but I uood him. And he seemed to uand me. So I told him how nice Miss Moriko was, and how she had a dungeon friend who wao make lots of iing new friends, and I asked him if he wao be the dungeon’s friend too. He wasn’t sure at first, but then he said he’d be willing to meet Miss Moriko’s dungeon friend. Um, that would be Mister Mordecai and Miss Kazue.”

  Shizoku focused on her breathing as Derek’s wandering narration slowly gave her at least some of the information she wanted. It didn’t help that he was staring at the ground the eime he was talking with her. “Okay. So it just sort of ‘happened’. Have you had any other iing things happen?”

  “Well, Mister Mordecai gave me a paagic cards to try out and see if any of the spells felt right. A couple of them made me feel a weird tingle, but when people tried to show me how to make those spells work for myself, nothing happened. I also tried to remember how that tingle felt and imagined casting the spells again, but the best I was able to do was get some pebbles to jump around randomly. That just seemed to fuse people. I don’t think that’s what happens when most people try to learn those spells.”

  The thirteen-year-old genius stared at the slow-talking, twelve-year-old instinctive prodigy of some rare, uified type of magic. This was not going to be easy. Maybe Akahana had something with her for headaches. Shizoku hoped so, because she was certain she was going to need lots of it.

  Zagaroth