“I assume the priest arrived because you wao alter the rules for how a dungeon works,” Mordecai asked.

  Norumi nodded, “Yes, but give me a moment.” She turo Kazue, who had put her head ba the table with her eyes closed. “Kazue, why don’t you e over to this side? That will eliminate your issue, yes?”

  Kazue lifted her head and blihen eagerly stood up and grabbed her chair before hurrying across to the Kuic side of the table. “Oh, that’s so much better.” She plopped her chair dowo Norumi’s. “Looks like I have a wise and benevolent stepdaughter.” She grinned up at the dryad-kitsune, and then Mordecai got to watch her briefly struggle with a sense of panic as she remembered that she was talking to the forest spirit.

  “I should have thought of that myself.” He said, smiling at Kazue as she regained her mental bance. “I’m sorry about that love.” It was good for her to get used to the much thinner e to her core anyway.

  “This is even worse for me in some ways.” Kazue’s croused. “I don’t like not having a body. At least when my ied avatar is here, there is some physical feedback.”

  “You’ll get used to it love,” he replied. “This is a normal part of dungeon life. And the experiences of your avatar will add to the growth of your personal self and our dungeon.” While Kazue’s avatar couldn’t obtaiailed information the dungeon could, her memories and sensory experiences would add to the data for the dungeon, which be very helpful when trying to replicate something that the dungeo have actual examples of.

  Norumi tinued her narrative while the dungeon cores were talking to each other. “What had bee the outlines of a ritual to expand what Kuic could do became a iatioually, the priests of ods got involved as well, each a blessing to bee part of this experiment. I’ll let Kuic expin what this entailed for her, but for myself and Haolong, this entailed us being the founders of the ruling family, as well as my founding the Azeria to act as the terbance. Haolong’s strength of arms and faith was not the sort of power that would extend his life much, and I didn’t want to found the ’s matriarchy without him, so the iatioo include him being a forest guardian after the passing of his mortal life.”

  She smiled slightly. “Ohat could take human form for long enough spans to help me found the . It also bouo bee a forest spirit to be with him, but my transformation was slower and my ability to ge shape enabled me to keep the ges invisible for a long while. The ges to the Azeria the other hand,” she sighed, “that was all my own doing, a ritual I designed and performed ter, when I fouhe . I wao help all my kin, adoptive and blood-reted, live longer lives without having to focus on a path of power that e, or having to worry as much about their lovers passing so much earlier if they did.” She made a vaguely helpless gesture. “The bance of having fewer children I should have foreseen, but I still have no idea why the imbaween men and women. I’ve never heard of another kitsune having this happen.”

  Kuic nodded. “I saw the ritual, I thought she knew about the ge to fertility rates, but that boy/girl thing seems like a glitothing iual should have caused it that I could figure out. But for me, while those two got entwined into all the political stuff, my part of the deal was much different.” She shook her head. “I could have refused, but holy it sounded iing. So, I have two types of territories: My dungeon proper and the kingdom territory. The dungeon proper is where I have normal full trol of the enviro. What I don’t have anymore is any ability to gee loot, cim inhabitants, evolve bosses, create traps, etc., though I at least got to keep my inal inhabitants. The purpose of my dungeon levels is an emergency shelter for any needs, which ties to ahing I’ll get to ter.”

  The idea of being without those abilities made Mordecai flinch, and Kuic gri him. “I knht? But I was being offered a lot too. While I ’t make them inhabitants, I provide mana and an evolutionary push to any animals inside my territory. If I do this behind the lines of an invading force, well, it seriously disrupts supply s, lowers morale, creates casualties, increases fatigue, etvading the kingdom is not an easy proposition. The other special trick I do for active defenses is a little bit like a tractor. But the ditions are different, and I have a lot more of them, and they get special powers that work outside of my territory instead of my being able to respawn them daily.” She paused, waiting to see if they could figure it out.

  Mordecai shook his head as he put it together, mostly from having the perspective of being an outsider who hadn’t grown up with it as a part of his life. “Kuic’s marked, are your marked.”

  “Correct!” She said with a giggle while Moriko’s and Kazue’s eyes widened with surprise. “The requirement is their loyalty to Kuic, and Kuic is me. ht, I hadn’t gotten to that. My territory is limited to the territory of the kingdom, but it is not defined solely by politid paper. It’s defined by the people of the kingdom. Like with Riverbridge, legally Kuic’s territory ends in the middle of the river even though both kingdoms have joint jurisdi, but my territory extends to the full extent of Riverbridge. Simirly, it expands to almost the other side of the river elsewhere, and es further up the hills than the maps say the kingdom does, because the people of Kuic think of it as part of Kuic, and that brew slightly toward you as more of them traveled to you.”

  “Which is why our borders stopped early!” Kazue interjected.

  Kuic nodded. “Yep. Dungeons fight for territory, but adjat dungeons are rather rare, and we wouldn’t be adjat if it wasn’t for my territory being aire kingdom.”

  Mordecai frowned. “Does that make your territory faith-based?”

  Kuic shrugged. “Sort of. I mean, its potential is faith-based, but the territory is cimed by my mana. Oher hand, since I have no inhabitants, I have a stant influx of mana from all the ‘guests’ and ‘delvers’ that fill my territory.”

  “Wait,” Moriko was the oh a puzzled expression now, “If you have all that territory and mana from the kingdom, why do you also have normal dungeon levels if you don’t have any inhabitants? Also, why does the kingdom still get random monster spawns the same as ions do?”

  “Well, a couple of reasons. One of them is that in an emergency, I teleport people into my dungeon levels for evacuation. I ’t do it for just ahey have to be a citizen or ally of Kuic, but I teleport the entire popuce of the kingdom if I really had to,” She sighed then, “but it really has to be an emergency. I am supposed to remain a secret and have some rules on when I intervene. I haven’t had to do a big evacuatio, and obviously, if I teleport people into my dungeon levels, they find out. But I have had to save a few royal members from assassination this way, and that’s usually the only reason people not of the Secret Keepers branch get to know the truth.” Kuic gri Mordecai. “You figured out enough on your own to let me talk to you about the rest, in the ideal of ving you to keep it a secret, rather than your limited discovery being spread. As for monster spawns, that's also part of the bance, I 't absorb all the flow of mana when I cover this much territory, and natural fluctuations happen. And,” she shrugged, "my borders haven't expanded in any signifit amount iwo hundred years, and my dungeon levels could hold the entire popution of the kingdom three times over and still have room for everyoo y down. When I was still spending mana, there were a lot fewer spawns, and there are fewer than in mions, but they still happen in a natural pattern."

  Mordeodded thoughtfully. “This ties a lot together. So Kuic’s allies who are beholden to the kingdom and agree to train Marked, I assume the agreement is what allows you to make a Mark resoh a particur ? We did agree to that provision, but I am not sure what abilities they could gain?”

  Kuic tapped her lips. “I’m not sure either. I kind of wish I had deyed marking Bellona, but I didn’t know that you were going to be pulled into an official alliahe main brand I have no diretera, so none of that was my doing. And even the secret keepers only hear from me when needed. Like, if I find out about an assassination attempt in time, I usually use them or do something to draw attention to the assassin. The few times I have had to teleport someo was because the assassin had been perfectly in character and tactless the eime they were here, until the st moment.” She shrugged slightly. “I have enough focuses to keep track of every royal family member.”

  Kazue blinked. “What, a core have more than one focus point?”

  Mordecai responded. “Yes, but those are slow to develop, though once you have a sed o is something you choose to develop faster, though as always such things mean you aren’t developing something else, just like any skill or talent a human might have.”

  She wrinkled her hat sounds like a pain.”

  “Well, it’d be o have a sed pce to be able to ‘look’ again, but that also seems like a lot to take in without my avatar processing it.”

  Mordecai smiled. “Your other self seems to agree. But I promise, the wait fetting a sed focus is because the core o grow enough first, so by the time you get it, you will be able to ha.”

  “Anyway,” Kuic said, “that covers most of what I do, ht. As you may have guessed from the fact that I haven’t walked in, I do not have an ied avatar. I mean, most people don’t visit all of a kingdom in a lifetime, so I still have lots of pces to visit and see and i with and experience, just, well, only within the kingdom. And I have to admit, that does limit things, and I do get bored, even though I have a lot of avatars. That’s different too: I get to create a new avatar each year, and each just simply lives out a normal life. But if they die, I don’t get to recreate that one. And that is one of my tools to help defend the kingdom, I use my avatars so long as I maintain the facade of a normal citizen, and a lot of my avatars have some very iing skills. And do coordirikes. I am my owe squad of specialists. But sihey ’t leave, it’s a purely defehing.”

  “Hmm,” Mordecai mulled that over, “It would be hard to abuse your abilities offensively, but if you baited a nation into spending their forces at you, it would leave them vulnerable to terattack.”

  Norumi replied, “You are correct Father, but please remember that most of my family does not know of Kuic, and thus do not know of that possibility. Plus the other line of my desdants are there to keep such ambitions in check. Which is not to say we didn’t have plenty of wars at first, we didn’t look strong, and neighb city-states were eager to take on the new upstart. While Haolong and I reigned, we defeated five other small nations who attacked us, and once we proved our stability and strength, we had more than a feao join the kingdom. That was plicated at times, some were not willing to let go of their own power as pletely as they o in order to bee part of our charter, and sometimes that caused internal strife, but we were always very careful to do our best to lead the way toeaceful coexistence. And sihen, well, our stability led to other nations f from multiple city-states, and sometimes they formed as a coalition to stand against us. We let them be so long as we were not attacked, but some people get paranoid.” She shrugged, her leaves and vines rustling softly. “I witnessed more than a few wars even after I was no longer queen and had fouhe . It was a few more turies until Azeria forest was entirely within the borders of Kuic, but we were an allied force the eime.” She gave a toothy grin. “And nations that sent forces into the forest generally found out what it was to be hunted. While the younger ones would o be whisked off to safety, the rest of us would stalk through the forest shadows. Ohat forest was cimed as territory, we never lost any of it.”

  That ed up most of what Kuic had e to say, and Norumi had been more ied in seeing her father, so the rest of the evening turoward more casual versation and socialization. But eventually, Norumi had to go. “Though we are not far from the forest, we are still outside of it, and it is a drain on me. I must return.” She stepped back across the border long enough to give her father a hug, and took the time to hug both Moriko and Kazue as well. “I do look forward to getting to know the both of you more personally. I know Kazue well, as I watch over all of our , but she does not know me the same way. So whenever you have the time, please e and visit, and you meet my husband as well. Unfortunately, we ot both leave the forest at the same time, and it’s much harder for him to begin with, as he was reborn into a guardian, while I transitioned without having to die first.”

  Promises to visit were made, and before she followed Norumi, Kuic made an invite as well. “When all three of you have a ce to visit the capital, make sure to meet with the other branch of the royal family. They guide you to the entrao my inner dungeon, and we have a proper dinner party there. Oh, o thing: I do not believe being marked by me will prevent Bellona from being a tractor to you, should everyone wish it. Araining is going well, she is being part of the genie-kin quite quickly.”

  Zagaroth