When Kazue and all of her family gathered in the feast hall, the atmosphere was certainly more subdued than usual. There was only so much she could do to fix that, but she was feeling much better now and bounced up to the raised dais. “Hello everyone, I am sorry we kept you all waiting. First, we have a few annous to make, then on with the prizes!”

  “To start with, I am happy to let you know that there were no true deaths from the invasion.” It felt a little callous to not directly aowledge the deaths of the inhabitants, but it was a simple matter of fact that their deaths were very temporary, and did not have the same impact that the death of one of the guests would have had. “And we thank our most ret guest for that, a friend of Mordecai’s who came just in time to help.” She sed around the room briefly. “Is Li here? Ah, there he is.” She beamed at the suddenly nervous-looking ratling holding a small sack filled with mushrooms. “I see you enjoyed your mushroom hunt. Thank you for being such a good friend to my husband and helping us out when we needed you.”

  “Y,y,you’re wele thank you very much I hope everything is okay but um I really should be um handing these over to the chef like Mordi said cause I haven’t won the game until I do okay thank you bye pretty dy!” As soon as he mao force himself past that brief nervous stammer, Li’s words once more spilled forth like a waterfall, and he beat a hasty retreat from Kazue’s attention while still chattering aart of her wao hug him again just because he was so cute, and a different part of her was amused at the idea of being capable of causing even a ‘mere’ shard of a shattered god to faint by hugging him.

  What she’d said omitted ohing: whether or not ‘hs’ included the invaders. They’d decided to keep that vague for noeren’t expeg to have to call upon our ret alliah the kingdom so soon, but between our own measures to prevent this sort of occurrence from happening again, and support from Kuic, I don’t think we are in much danger in the immediate future. As for who attacked us and why, well, we have our suspis, but we’re going to leave verifying that to the specialists and don’t want to spread any rumors before that.”

  Kazue cpped her hands together with a smile. “Now, onto happier annous. We had already been pnning this before tonight. We’ve entered into a deal with Ricardo,” Goddess it felt so weird to use her dad’s name, but she eaking as the dungeon here, “And he’s going te to help our bunkin and rabkin learn to struct buildings outside of the dungeorance. We want to create a trading post so everyone rest properly and stable their horses and maybe stock up supplies, etc.”

  Some people looked less surprised than others, as Brongrim and Nainvil had not been asked to keep the news fidential. The dungeon did not want to look like it was keepis, especially when it was. “And our final annou leads to handing out prizes. There will be a sparring match between Takehiko and Mordecai in the m, which is part of the agreement for Takehiko not having participated in the boss battle on the sixth floor. His final prizes will be determined after that. Now for everyone else.”

  “Shizoku, the first prize we have for you is a grimoire. Normally a witch whose familiar acts as their spellbook has little need frimoire, but this one has a special entment. It’s desigo be absorbed by your familiar, so that your familiar then absorb and incorporate both normal books and ented grimoires. This should make the process of transferring any spells you find a lot easier. It also has a pition of our information about the philosophical elements, including types and arras used by other cultures, which should help with expanding Derek’s capabilities. For example, we sider lightning an aspect of air, but other cultures have sidered it an aspect of fire. It might help in your own research as well.”

  The thirteen-year-old kitsune accepted the heavy tome with the wide, eager eyes of a bibliophile handed a unique book. “Thank you… wait, this means I have Bip absorb any book I want, to refereer?”

  “Yep! Though I don’t reend recreational-reading books, since you ’t read them directly. But it’s good if there’s simply information you want to be able to referend don’t mind it being just sent into your head. Oh, and Bip will only be able to hold so muformation at a time, but as you get stronger, your bond with your spellslime should let him hold more books. And be careful about filling him up, you won’t get the book back if you have to have him fet any information. Speaking of information, we came up with this one on a whim, but thought you might like it.”

  She handed Shizoku a short, hollow rod of steel that had a lens at oip, and a clear crystal ied into the other, and had three buttons along its length. “This is a variation of a rec rod, but instead of only being able to hold a single rec that gets overwritten, you save a rec by sing out the crystal at the other end. The crystal will take on colors relevant to the rec when y.” Now Kazue grinned. “Of course, you are only getting two additional crystals right now, if you want more you have to e bad win them.”

  Brot a new sword that could be activated to create random elemental motes whe struck a creature, and those motes would attay nearby enemies or other targets that Brongrim mentally marked. The effely sted a minute, and it took an hour to rebuild its charge, but even though the motes didn’t do much damage there were some creatures with extreme adverse reas to even a small exposure of specific elemental energy. It could be a bit cy to use, but it could also be very useful. He also received a case holding a variety of different elementally infused ammunition.

  Nainvil’s new greatsword was a careful fusion of cold iron on one half and silvered steel oher, letting him use either edge as needed. It also had two runic properties: O of runes allowed it to shapeshift into any simirly sized on, and the other set allowed the on to el any elemental energy Nainvil was exposed to. While many creatures at least resisted their favored energies to use, this was not universal, and it could be used in jun with Brongrim’s short sword’s motes.

  The three guardsmen were not given items ized to each, as all three had proven to be talented generalists. Instead, they were each given a pair of items to aid in their ability to be flexible batants. One ear that could shift readily between a smaller form that could be used one-handed or thrown, and would automatically return to the person who threw it, and a long-spear form that could be used with two hands and act as a basic polearm. The sed item they got was a shield that would help ward them against magid could potentially block spells that normal shields would be useless against.

  All six of them, plus Takehiko, also received the now standard bandoleer with a set of the dungeon’s special honey-based healing aalizing potions. After that, Kazue moved on to prizes for the teams that had cleared the sixth floor of her challenges. In addition to the potions, she gave ea ented version of a tool or instrument they seemed to favor, or something else that seemed to fit their personality. And then the new prizes came out.

  Everyone else who had cleared the sixth floor of Kazue’s path had received some small, portable piece of art that had intrinsic value in its materials, and Kazue had enjoyed making those. But it was time to start testing their designs for ems. Today everyone also had the option of a plush doll of one of the inhabitant species such as dire rabbits, and these dolls were all ented. For a few hours each day, they could be ao awaken, and they would grow to three feet tall and take on behavior suitable for pets or pymates for children. Though durable, they were soft, squishy, permeable, and desigo prevent even actal harm during py.

  While Kazue was taking care of the rest of the guests and Moriko was enjoying the ce to finally just rest and rex, Mordecai was keeping track of Li. Wheling was finishing up his meal (and several side dishes too), Mordecai walked up to his favorite little whirlwind of chaos. “Hey Li, how did you enjoy your meal? And would you like me to give you a short tour of our area down here? I know you like expl the rest of the dungeon on your own, but I think you might like being shown a few things in our home area.”

  “Sure thing I am all done here I really like the food it is way better than your st pce I mean no offense or anything but these guys are really good and make all sorts of stuff that I’ve ried before and they were happy to keep feeding me hings and I am going to e back here lots and lots so where are we going and what are you showing me huh?” Li’s chatter was an endless stream as usual, and Mordecai wasn’t certain if any being that actually o breathe could speak quite that fast.

  “Well, since we are down this way already, let’s start with the workshops.” Li had beeing at a table i as he could keep talking with the cooks as they served him more food, and Mordecai didn’t have a lot of preferences as to where Li spent his time, with one exception that came up toward the end of the tour.

  “And these are our bedrooms. We share this tral one, but we each have our own private room too in case we need any aloime. It’s okay to e down this way if you o find me, but you should make sure to knod wait to be invited in. After all, Kazue and Moriko share the room with me, and you wouldn’t want to actally walk in on them while they were ging or anything.” The implications of a bedroom wouldn’t sink in on their own, so he made sure to y in that st bit with a touphasis.

  “Oh wow this pce is I think it's evey so the three of you have four bedrooms that seems like a lot and I don’t think you eve one bedroom for yourself before wait do you mean that there could be naked girls here?” Li’s eyes widened with a touch of panic at the thought and he began looking around nervously like he might be ambushed at any moment. “Yeah, yeah I be careful but maybe we should go now Mordi what else did you want to show me this whole pce has bee, you should really show me some more of somepce else!” The ratling had started with slowly bag up, then turned around to hustle his way out at a faster pace than normal.

  Mordecai took a moment to pce the elixir opal in a jewelry box before following his friend out, feeliain that it would be safe here now.

  Zagaroth