Chương 513: B8—Chapter 20: So That’s What This Is

During the morning, I kept waking up to bangs against the house. When I turned my attention to the core, I could feel it absorbing mana from the monsters, but it wasn't enough. Initially, Lis built mana absorption into the house, and we improved it when we worked on the house in Tatob, but it looked like I needed to revisit this specific function and see if I could improve it further. With better mana absorption, the house should be able to actually dissolve a monster attacking it, not just weaken it.

All of us got up after a few hours of sleep, but none of us looked especially refreshed. Over breakfast, Mahya kept muttering about stupid monsters, and Al yawned every few minutes. I pretty much felt like both of them. Only Rue seemed perky. While I cooked breakfast and we ate, the bangs continued, coming from all around the house. At some point, Mahya threw down her fork with a sharp clatter, growled, got to her feet, muttered, "I'll be right back," and headed for the door.

I canceled the house protection and followed her out, just in case. Monsters surrounded the house. Most were the tangled-roots variety, but now we faced a new specimen. It looked like a snake with a cobra hood made of roots and branches wound around each other like a metal cable. And of course, it was impervious to lightning. I really didn't like the monsters in this forest. The one good thing was that, apparently, the mana absorption worked better than I'd thought.

The monsters were so sluggish they moved like oozing jello and were pretty much defenseless. Mahya went through them like a scythe through wheat, leaving me only two to take care of. I could have pushed my speed and taken three or four, but she needed the outlet. The mana on this side of the barrier was denser, as if the barrier kept not only people out but also prevented the mana from escaping.

In the first part of the forest, I regenerated fast, but here, after the lightning attempts and the mana edge on the axe, the pins-and-needles sensation made me shiver for a moment or two. And again, the strong taste of leaves and bark filled my mouth. Ugh. After breakfast, we closed up the house, turned invisible, engaged Stealth, and moved further in. This part didn't offer the all-you-can-forage buffet from before, but the variety of herbs was greater and their quality higher.

Al exclaimed over every other bush and clump of grass or moss we passed. With the dense underbrush, we had to hack our way through, so the invisibility was pretty much wasted. The monsters knew exactly where we were. After about fifty meters, we understood the frivolity of it and dropped both effects. It was easier that way. The monsters on this side were bigger and tougher too, but thankfully fewer in number. Otherwise, there was a good chance we would've had to retreat.

Our progress fell into a pattern: hack through a couple of massive bushes, Al making happy noises over some smaller plant hidden underneath, him harvesting the herbs while Mahya and I fought the monsters, Rue complaining about the monsters, and me casting healing spells on all of us. Rinse and repeat. That pattern continued until we'd pushed about half a kilometer in, a feat that took most of the afternoon.

It was getting darker by the minute, so Mahya and I cast Light Balls to see better when Al suddenly froze and swore under his breath. Not one of his high-society curses either, but full sailor speak. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"What is it?" Mahya asked.

"We have to modify our understanding regarding this place," he said, his tone grim. Mahya and I both went, "Huh?" at almost the same time. He pointed at a green bush with tiny white and purple flowers.

"This herb grows only in dungeons."

"You sure?" I asked. He nodded once.

"I am positive. This variety never grows outside of dungeons, not even in high-mana worlds. We are in an open dungeon."

"What the hell is an open dungeon?"

"I do not have much information. Only two brief mentions in my family's archive. In both cases, it was noted in passing that one of my ancestors encountered such a phenomenon and left the area with due haste. There was no explanation for the haste."

"Lis once told me about an open dungeon," Mahya said.

"But he didn't have much to add either. He only said that once their group realized it was an open dungeon, they retreated." She spread her hands.

"That's all I know." Two root snakes cut our conversation short, bursting out of the underbrush. Once they were in crystal form, I glanced between the two of them.

"What do you want to do?"

"First open the house, and then we'll decide," Mahya said. Inside, once we sat down to eat dinner, I brought it up again.

"We can write to Lis and ask him," Al suggested. I shook my head.

"Won't work. The fastest he ever answered me was a few days, usually a couple of weeks. I think the time skip between the worlds is too big."

"We're in a different world. Maybe this one has a shorter time skip?" Mahya said. I shrugged and pushed my plate aside.

"Maybe. But I wouldn't count on it. I wrote him from different worlds, and it always took him time to answer. I'm not sure he checks the Archive every day. I check it every other week or something, so he probably does something similar." She rubbed her forehead with two fingers.

"I really don't want to search in the general Archive." We all nodded, sharing equally pained expressions. After a moment, Al straightened his shoulders as if preparing for battle rather than research.

"We do not have a choice but to brave the atrocious Archive. I suggest we do it now to find answers as fast as possible." We spent hours scrolling through the Archive with little success, monsters thudding against the house every few minutes. I skimmed through the new crap, reached my last communication with Lis, then scrolled past it faster until I found the article I'd discovered in the past about the similarities between fauna in various worlds. It was the deepest part of the Archive I'd ever reached.

From there, I slowed down, shook my head at all the junk, and kept digging. Sometime in the middle of the night, Mahya pushed her chair back, stood, stretched her arms over her head, and yawned.

"I'm going to bed. Let's continue looking tomorrow."

"I'll keep going for a while," I said without looking up.

"I don't want to scroll past everything I already went through again." She paused beside me.

"Just leave it open and continue from the same place tomorrow."

"How? It'll block my field of vision." She made a face.

"Just minimize it." I stared at her. She shook her head and sighed.

"I thought Lis taught you that. Intend to minimize the Archive without closing it and push mana into the intention." On the third try, the window shrank and slid to the bottom corner of my field of vision. It still snagged my attention, but it didn't block my sight anymore. I nodded at Mahya and gave her a thumbs-up. Only then did I realize Al wasn't in the living room. I felt him upstairs already. Yawning, I copied their excellent idea.

The next morning, after the three of us cleared all the monsters around the house, we went back inside to continue searching. I really liked the weakening effect the mana absorption had on them. Fighting a root tangle that stabbed and whipped at you, no matter how fast you moved, was terrible. Fighting the same monster when it moved at a snail's pace was pure fun, and a deeply satisfying revenge for all those lashes. In the late afternoon, Mahya called, "Found something."

Her screen popped into visibility with an article named, Dungeons: The Best Way to Make Money or Die Horribly. From that point on, I scrolled faster until I reached the same article. (To be continued...)