“… and so I ask Ozzi if he’s starting a harem like Emperor Snootypuss cause I remember getting trapped in Snootypuss’s bed chambers and it was scary because I was starving, I haden in like hours and that’s when the blue-haired girl tried to stab me with a fming rapier and the kitsune freaked out and sort of exploded theea set started dang and singing about how was to host birthday parties because its always a birthday somewhere and then the blue girl and I pyed tag, she was it of course, and we ran around and around the forest and then I got lost but I found the whole big vilge of fox girls did you know that most of their food is either meat or deserts er, um…”

  Li’s voily trailed off because a girl bunkin was walking up to him with a pitcher and a tall cup. “Hello Mister Li, I was worried you might be getting thirsty, would you like some sweet juice to drink?” The little ratling could only nod mutely, his eyes wide.

  Mordecai took advantage of this carefully arranged ce. “Hey, Li, I think I have a new game for you. You like sger hunts, right? How about one where you have to find ingredients for a special dish one of my chefs will cook for you?”

  “Ooh! That sounds ! What do I have to find?” The distra had pulled Li’s limited attention away from the cute bunny girl, causing him to immediately fet his brief panic.

  “Well, a friend of mine has made twenty-three of these special mushrooms appear all over the dungeon,” Mordecai created a small illusion to show the image of a three-tiered mushroom tree not unlike Saraag’s boss-tree form. “They will all have this triple-cap design but e in different colors. The only question is, do you want normal mode, or do you wara-super-hard mode?”

  Li’s eyes lit up at that. “What’s the extra-super-hard mode?!”

  “Well, every time you find one, all the others will ge location, so you will never know if one might be somepce you already looked. You’ll have to hunt through the entire dungeon multiple times to find all the mushrooms if we py it like that.”

  “Oh! Oh! Let’s do that! I bet I beat it record time, a a new world record! I’m going to be a famous speed runner!” Li put his empty cup oable and jumped down to start to race off, only to e to a screeg halt when his eyes actally met the skeptical gaze of Shizoku. The ratling started making a wide circle around the three-tailed girl, like a rat terrified that it was about to get eaten by a fox, then dashed off again as soon as he was he door.

  As soon as Li was gone, Shizoku spun back around with an incredulous expression on her face. “Seriously, that was supposed to be a god? Surely you’re joking.”

  “Although he’s rarely serious, Li is indeed a god. And he doesn’t like being called Shirley.” Mordecai said with a perfectly level void ral expression. The pained, disgusted look oeesune’s face was beautiful.

  Kazue scooted away from him and huddled ‘fearfully’ against Moriko. “I think we were deceived about what sort of monster we were actually marrying.” She said in a stage whisper. The half-elf nodded in solemn agreement as she patted Kazue fly.

  Mordecai allowed himself a smirk then. “I ’t help it, he brings out that side of me. It might be a survival reflex at this point for the sake of my sanity. Anyway, the hard mode should buy us ara hour or two, so let’s take care of all the things uest will not deal well with before that. Then I’m going to be occupied for a while,” He paused a moment as he realized something, “Kazue, Moriko, I’ve been kind of just taking charge, I didly ask. Are you okay with me tinuing that way for now?”

  The two women checked with each other, then turned ba and nodded. “Thank you. Now, as I was saying earlier, I know how they got the sg sensor down here so easily.” He pced three tokens oable. One of them had a slightly burnt look to it, the other two had been deliberately cracked in half. “All three had the same entments on them: A may measure; a core proximity sensor; and a e to a remote sg setup that could be activated ohe burnt one had this e activated, I had the other two broken to make sure that they couldn’t be used again.”

  Akahana frowned. “Is it just me, or does this feel like someone who is fidently running on insuffit knowledge? They had the correct setup to get reasonably close to the core, and a detly strong team, but even during my first visit this group probably wouldn’t have been able to get to your core. I did do a little more research after that trip, I know you decre an emergency when under a true threat and resurrect all your creatures and bosses ohey were strong enough that they’d have sughtered most of your bosses, but between them and just the pure numbers of you could have thrown at them with your avatar bag them up you’d have still gotten through this lot, it would have just been a lot bloodier on your end,” she tilted her head slightly, “well, that, and they’d probably be all dead instead of somehow all alive, however barely.”

  Mordecai gave a half smile. “Luckily, we had help on that end. Li’s presence sped up the battle, and luck is part of his domain. It is the major influence he has in proteg those who fall under his influence.” Li Zarb was the patron of the lost, street urs, storytellers, and all children in need of help. God of fortuo those who help others in need, god of misfortuo any who would harm children. This also meant that the favor of his fortune could switch ‘sides’ easily, as he was more ed with proteg the children of both sides than whatever justifications for war two sides had.

  That thought ainful. He could only imagine how many shards of Li had been brought to this world in respoo the war he’d inflicted upon it. And worse than that oignant awarehat Li could not have been successful with all the children. The nature of reality was that even gods had only finite influen the universe, and not even Li could viote that.

  The blood of is is a bad enough descriptor when you don’t think about it deeply, but for Mordecai, it meant that the worst of his sin was taking the lives of children, however ily. He was amazed that Li was willing tive that, even with his generally kind and fiving nature.

  He shook his head to break out of his morose reverie, to find Kazue having taken up expining more of Li’s nature. “I was bad about falling asleep during the sermons, but I read all the books, even if they weren’t relevant to my shrine maiden duties. Li’s not like ods, there is ral self or ‘true’ version. Each shard is as true as any other, and he’s always as quick, strong, or tough as he thinks he should be. Impressive-looking armor of normal steel stop his dagger when thin armor made of special materials and heavily ented ’t. Reality is malleable to him, but he is also unfocused and does not know he has this ability. He is ‘shattered’ in mind, body, soul, and power. It’s not just a fancy title, it is a description of his existence.”

  Shizoku looked like she had a headache, so Mordecai took ain to redirect the versation. “Knowing how they got the sg sensor in so accurately means that I probably figure out how to detect simir tokens, so I stop that method iure. However, until we shift our floors more, the mage who cast the teleport will still have a rough lo the location of the core room. Fortunately, they are still having to breach dimensional barriers, as a dungeon is an expanded space, so without the accurate lock of a sg sensor they are as likely to pnt people into rock or kick them into one of the transitive realms. And the barrier gets stronger as a dungeon grows, and your target location ges with every floor a dungeon adds. This is why nobody normally tries to teleport past all the defehere are multiple points of high risk.”

  “Hmm,” Ricardo was tapping his thoughtfully. “So even for a normal dungeon, it sounds like you want several groups of elites to try and force your way through. Well, I see why that didn’t happen as their first try.”

  “Oh?”

  Ricarded with a grin. “Hostile teleports into Kuic fail. It’s part of whatever magic creates the Marked, and part of what keeps a retively small kingdom so well defended from our more militaristieighbor.”

  Mordecai looked around the room to see nods and shrugs. It seems this was on knowledge for everyone who grew up here. “Alright. Well, that doesn’t expin why they didn’t teleport in a rger troop in the area outside of the border.”

  “That’d be a different but reted problem. If you found enough mercs that were desperate norant enough to try, f up a bunch of troops just outside the bets noticed by the same magics, and that would alert the capital and their mages. So you’d o teleport in your troops further up the mountain, which means trying to march them into the dungeon in small enough groups that the activity wasn’t noticed in time.”

  Huh. “That’s a thh piece of spellwork. I am having trouble figuring out where I would even begin. And the price, that had to be much more than physical.” Mordecai shook his head. “Oaths that bind bloodlines were made, I think I guess that much, especially with how the Royal Family acts. But we are getting off-topic, sort of.”

  The hi oable was a silver amulet; it was a ft disk with an emblem of a sword and staff crossed over a book. “Power and knowledge, with no care for how it is acquired. I reize Dormire’s holy symbol, and a quick check through the books we acquired previously tells me that he rose from demigod to lesser god while I was sealed. I did not find anything that associates him with the purity cult. Did I miss anything or is he still just a general-purpose asshole?”

  The younger people present looked shocked at his mild bsphemy, while Takehiko, Ricardo, and Akahana took it in stride. “General purpose ass does sound abht.” Akahana mused. “If one of his priests was rising in power through the cult, well, that’s power. He wouldn’t have an obje to that, and he is willing to ence them to pete against each other so long as it makes them stronger.”

  Mordeodded, “So we eliminate his church as a direct threat, but probably not an ally either. So, barring any information we acquire ter from our prisoners, I think we know enough to add protes to keep this from being tried again before we are big enough that this trick wouldn’t be enough to pee our natural defeo that end, Akahana, I wish to hire you on behalf of the dungeon for a project.”

  Zagaroth