After they had visited the community, they had taken a short training run against the ant dungeon. They had taken it slow, ensuring they didn’t get swarmed while also introducing them both to the methods needed to fight the insects and their hard carapaces. A half hour of fighting was enough to exhaust them all, and they quickly retreated to a safe area.

  That spelled the end of their trip that night, and as the others went to sleep, Nate moved on to his research project. He was still studying the floating jellyfish that had been found at the dungeon in the Grand Canyon. Making his own meditation art was an ongoing project, and he enjoyed it, but it was certainly more difficult than he imagined.

  His evolved energy skill, ‘Binding Ties’, was constantly revealing new pieces of information to him. The problem lay in just how much there was to learn about how they used their element and skills.

  The next morning, they continued their trek through the woods, talking about everything that had happened the night before.

  Once they were in the clear, Nate took out the RV from his storage. Then they drove back to the road and recommenced their journey. Once more Lindsay was behind the wheel, though for the moment she was paying extra attention to how she drove. In the back, Angie napped, as unlike Nate or even Aura, she and Lindsay were awake the entire time they had been in the dungeon. Nate’s main body was asleep in the RV, and Aura… well there was something about being near Nate’s core that made any rest she got while wrapped around it far more effective.

  A few minutes here, and a few minutes there, was enough for the young kitsune.

  The group’s current destination was Richmond, as it was the largest city they had confirmation of in the area. There were numerous smaller towns all around it, each gradually working to grow the size of the main city. There were several decently powerful dimensional zones that they had been working to push back for many years.

  Now that the secret was officially out, Nate felt comfortable having his laptop and notebook out while he sat in the passenger seat next to Lindsay. That way, he could continue to work on the dungeons while acting as her navigator, instead of trying to be somewhat discreet about it in the back.

  “Is that what you were always doing on your laptop?” She asked, looking over at him for a quick moment.

  He nodded, not surprised that they had seen him working on it. He hadn’t exactly been trying to hide it or anything, as he had been counting more on everyone not being able to see the wrist computer, or rather, the DCD.

  “What did you think I was doing with it this entire time?”

  Lindsay turned back to the road and sort of shrugged. “Angie and I always saw you swapping between your notebook and the laptop. So, we sort of just figured that you were writing a story or something.”

  Nate grinned, but shook his head. “Nah, I don’t have the imagination for something like that. Just coming up with all these traps is pushing me to my limits.”

  “What are you doing, then?”

  “Tweaks and optimizations for the most part. I try to leave any major changes till nighttime, unless I notice something major. The Dungeon Cores are pretty good at making sure everything works well and that there aren’t stupid issues. However, that only really begins to take effect after they have been upgraded at least once. At that point, the dungeon is rather large, and the number of enemies and traps strewn about the place is huge. It just becomes a massive number of moving parts. I like to do what I can to help keep everything moving smoothly.”

  “Huh? Do you think I could take a look at your notes later?” She asked, keeping her eyes on the road.

  He blinked in surprise. The idea that they might want to look at the notes he had been making all that time hadn’t even occurred to him. “Yeah, I, uh suppose you can. I didn’t even think about it being useful to the both of you.”

  They rode in silence for a while as Lindsay delicately navigated around gaping potholes and fallen debris.

  “I have a question for you,” She finally asked.

  “Hmm? Shoot.” He said without looking up from what he was doing.

  “Who is managing the community at the first dungeon?”

  Nate chuckled and shook his head. “Do you really need to ask? I thought it would be obvious.”

  “Well, I certainly have my suspicions, but I wasn’t entirely certain. At least not until now,” Lindsay muttered. “So, you’re really letting Aura manage the entire community?”

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “No reason not to,” He said with a nod. “They are her people, so she knows what they need and are capable of better than I ever could.”

  “Still, what’s with all the kitsunes engraved on the wall around the place?”

  “Oh, that was something I told her to do,” He said with a laugh. “Something to remind them who was protecting them. Aura’s family were their rulers back on their planet until they were overthrown. That’s how she came to be in the dungeon in the first place. She was running for her life, injured and afraid. Then we met at just the right time. It was kismet, luck, serendipity, fate, destiny, whichever one you subscribe to.”

  “What will you do with the future communities?” She asked a while later, after she’d had time to digest what he had said about Aura’s origins.

  “The best I can,” He replied with a shrug. “The best idea I’ve managed to come up with so far is to have the citizens of the community write what they need on a board. That way, they can simply tell me what they need. However, that only works with species that have a written language, which not all of them do. The slimes certainly don’t. They barely even have a verbal language.”

  “Why convert their dungeon into a community, then?”

  “It’s partially a test,” He admitted. “The community makes the inhabitants smarter and less aggressive to the inhabitants of our world. At least as long as they aren’t attacked. It helps them gain a thinking will of their own. I guess is the best way to put it. They will no longer be ruled by their instincts and whatever the portal and dimensional zone want them to do.

  “I want to see how smart slimes can become for one. More than that though, I want to see what other options there are for communities. They are already really useful, but it just has always struck me as something that is meant to be used as a… well, a community of communities.”

  “You think there is still more to it than what you have already discovered?”

  “Oh, I know there is. The phrasing in some of the messages I’ve gotten since creating the community makes no sense otherwise.”

  “Do you have any guesses on what else there might be?”

  Nate slowly shook his head. “No, there are a few things that I hope might show up in some form, but actual hints have been sparse.” He placed his notebook to the side and closed his laptop, deciding that he was finished with his other activities for the moment. “I know we talked about this briefly earlier, but now that you know my secret, what do you think? How do you feel?”

  “I’m not sure,” Lindsay answered after taking her time to think it over carefully. “Despite everything, a part of me still doesn’t believe it’s real.” She waggled her wrist with the computer on it. “Then I just have to look at this and I’m reassured that it actually did happen.”

  “I get that,” He did too.

  While Nate had been decently prepared mentally, when it first appeared, it had still been a shock. He hadn’t known what it was going to be used for at the time, or how he was going to be able to handle everything. His body had been in terrible condition back then. It was a stressful time, especially in the beginning.

  “We should probably see about hooking up with a merchant caravan once we reach Richmond,” Lindsay said a while later as she sped up and swerved around a large partially eaten animal corpse that had been left on the road. “The dimensional zones and most of the things coming out of them are getting stronger than we can handle on our own.”

  He nodded. It was something they had already discussed before. If he hadn’t wanted to introduce them to the dungeons in the manner that he had, then they probably would have joined up with a group at one of the earlier cities or towns. The qi in this area was far denser than where they lived in Colorado, and that had a direct effect on the strength of everything else.

  On the plus side though, they were finding more herbs and other plants that had been changed by the qi. Nate had been stuffing them into his storage as well as using its identification function. It was really too bad that none of them had ended up taking the examine energy skill. He still had open slots thanks to the backup core, but despite being able to simply forget the skill if needed, something held him back. It wasn’t anything logical, and he knew that. It was just a stupid, almost OCD-like mental compulsion, that urged him not to select something he would later get rid of.

  It was annoying, but since they could simply study and learn most of the valuable and useful herbs, it hadn’t seemed like a big deal at the time. Now, he was regretting giving into that stupid inner voice.

  “We’ll see what’s available as soon as we arrive. I don’t mind waiting a couple of days to move to the next destination if it means we can do so in a safer manner. It’ll give us a chance to relax and get some things done.” He agreed readily.

  “Angie will enjoy that,” Lindsay told him, taking a quick glance back at where the girl was sleeping behind them. “Her parents asked her to perform a few duties as a member of their merchant family if the chance arose. I think that traveling beside some other groups, whether they are merchants as well or cultivators, definitely counts.”

  “That’s all well and good,” Nate muttered. “But I’m more worried about the possible ways this could go wrong. So far, we have gotten lucky with our various interactions that have happened with other cultivators on this trip. I’m worried about how long that luck will last though.”

  “You don’t have much faith in people, do you?”

  “Is there a reason I should?” He shot back with a smirk.

  They hadn’t run into any trouble on the trip, yet. The ‘yet’ was key, in that particular sentence. None of them had forgotten Jace, or Nina and Niall’s old boss, who had done a pump and dump on them while they were out on their expedition. Most people weren’t like that, however, there were enough of them out there that were that they needed to be wary.

  Nate had a different perspective as well, one that had come from all the stories he had read during his previous life. Granted, he didn’t believe that information was reliable in the slightest. After all, they had been nothing but fiction. However, there were some nuggets of information that he had found fairly reliable, and one of them was how he had seen people acting. The annoying young master trope was, thankfully, somewhat rare. That said, there were plenty of regular cultivators who seemed to go out of their way at times to make life difficult for those in lower realms.

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