Chương 516: B8—Chapter 22: I Hate it When She Makes Sense

We rested for two days. Al asked me to open the house in his room, then vanished into his lab. Mahya left for reasons unknown and only came back at night to sleep. I spent most of my time roaming the city and took Rue on a culinary exploration that involved a lot of meat. On the morning of the third day after we escaped the dungeon, Mahya joined Al and me for breakfast in the inn's common room, looking downright combative.

"What's with the expression?" I asked. She dropped into her chair, studied me for a second, then sighed.

"I have an idea you're not going to like." She lifted her hand, as if to stop us before we could say anything.

"Before you argue with me, hear me out." She looked between the two of us.

"So you wish us to return to the dungeon?" Al asked, taking the words right out of my mouth. Mahya nodded. I looked at her like she had lost her mind. No, there was no like about it. She had lost her mind. She looked between us, caught my expression, and made a face.

"Don't give me that. Hear me out first, then give me the evil eye." I made a go-ahead motion. She nodded.

"Good. So, about the dungeon. Yes, I know getting out was kind of hard, but the problem started only when we tried to leave. Before that, we dealt with the monsters quite easily." She waved her hand, as if brushing the point aside.

"Never mind that. I have a question. Did you identify the monsters?" Al and I nodded. She looked at me, her eyebrows shooting up.

"You did?"

"A few," I said.

"Did you notice the levels?" I nodded. She frowned, clearly confused.

"Then you should understand why I want to go back." Now it was my turn to look at her, utterly lost.

"This dungeon is a rare find, and I don't mean the sentient guardian or anything like that. I mean the dungeon itself. It's in a medium mana world, so despite the high levels, the monsters are relatively easy. Think about it. In Tatob, the plant monsters were much more dangerous twenty to thirty levels lower."

"So?" I asked. She threw me a challenging look.

"So this dungeon is a gold mine. I know both of you got more than one level." She held our eyes in turn.

"I can feel it. Even I got one, and that's much harder for me. Those monsters are trash. Two basic attacks that aren't that dangerous, no ranged or magical attacks, from level forty and sixty monsters?" She spread her hands.

"Come on. Where are we going to find another gold mine like this?"

"Not dangerous?" I asked, letting out a short laugh.

"Are you kidding me? The stabbing roots shredded our armor, and I had to heal more than a few holes in us, despite the shields and you and Al jumping all over the place. And I'm not even getting into the lashes. Sure, they're not deadly, but my body still hurts with phantom pain." I looked straight at her.

"And what about the snakes? They kept trying to lunge and take our heads off. Their tail lashes were so strong they sent us flying like bowling balls. And don't get me started on the one that almost squeezed me into paste." She pointed at me.

"And that's my point. Each of them has only two basic attacks that we're familiar with and know how to deal with." I opened my mouth to argue again about the snake that had squeezed me, but she lifted her hand to stop me.

"Yes, I know you almost died from that snake, and I'm sorry we didn't help you before you got out on your own, but with your new method of putting them to sleep, that won't happen anyway." She looked between us.

"So the snakes are covered. And I'll remind you again, level sixty-plus snakes are covered. Think about it." She waved a hand.

"The roots, I also have two ideas on how to deal with them."

"How?" Al asked. She turned to him.

"First, you should make the same potion you made for the nature dungeon in Tatob. It worked on the vines that formed the barrier, so it should work on the monsters. Second, we're idiots. All of us." She jabbed a finger between us.

"The city has a law against fire, but we weren't in the city, or even the first ring of the dungeon. We were in the second ring." She raised an eyebrow.

"Why didn't either of you try throwing some fireballs at them? They're wood. Fire is their main enemy." She kept looking at us with a challenging expression. Al and I fidgeted. She had a point.

"Do you intend to go after the core?" Al asked. Mahya opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, I said, "No," in a decisive tone. She squinted at me. Now it was my turn to give her a challenging look.

"First of all, this forest is huge. Just based on the first two rings, I estimate it has another ten, maybe more, and each one will be harder and more dangerous." I looked between them.

"Am I wrong?"

"No," Al said. Mahya looked bummed but didn't say anything.

"And second," I continued, "it would be wrong. Very wrong, even if we could do it." I pointed out the window.

"A city of millions is built around this dungeon and depends on it. It's not just a natural treasure, but a national treasure of the highest order." I looked at Mahya.

"Don't pretend you don't care. You agreed to leave the core of the dungeon with the crafting rewards. And if we compare the two, that one was worth a cent, while this one is worth millions. Taking the core wouldn't be a simple swipe. It would be a serious crime against far too many people." Mahya nodded and sighed.

"I know. In the heat of the moment, I wanted the core, but I know it would be wrong to take it, even if we reached the end." She paused, then shook her head.

"But that's not what I'm aiming for. The place is enormous. We'd have hundreds of easy high-level monsters to fight for levels, Al would get more of his beloved herbs, and I plan to cut some trees from the inner ring. They're ten times better than the ones in the first ring." She looked between us.

"So, what do you say?" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. I nodded reluctantly. I really hated it when she made sense.

"One more thing," Mahya said. I sighed inwardly. What now? She set a tall glass full of mana crystals on the table.

"I have an idea for how to progress my core. Those crystals are only the ones I harvested while you were busy. I'm sure you two have a lot more. We should count all the crystals and split them three ways. Then I'll—" The innkeeper approached our table, cutting her off, his eyes locked on the glass. He slowed as he reached us, glanced around the common room, and shot a sharp look at two men who had gone very still. Then he turned back to us, his voice low and tight.

"Please don't display things like that here, and I need you to leave." He swallowed.

"I'll return your money for the rooms."

"What?" I asked. That caught me completely off guard. He gestured around the room.

"This place feeds my family. I won't have it torn apart because someone decides those stones are worth killing for." He met my eyes, fear plain on his face.

"Please. Take them somewhere else." Rue jumped up and growled. The innkeeper flinched and took a step back. He pulled a handful of coins from his pouch and dropped them on the table with a clatter.

"Please leave." His expression hardened.

"Now." The two men he had glared at earlier were gone. We stood without a word, walked out the front, circled behind the building to the stable, and turned invisible.

"What is your idea with the core?" Al asked telepathically.

"I've been thinking," Mahya sent back.

"To create a sentient guardian, a core needs time, right? But time isn't a resource a core actually uses. Mana is. So if I feed it enough mana, I think it'll progress to the point where it can absorb whole dungeons, like John's. His grew from thirty centimeters to almost fifty in just a few years, purely by gorging on mana. That's the other reason I wanted to go into the forest. With the number of monsters there, I can collect a lot of crystals."

"Should we go in now?" I asked.

"You have something you need to take care of?" she asked.

"No, I'm good." This time, it took us only a couple of hours to reach the first barrier, since we didn't stop to collect anything. Once we verified nobody was close enough to notice the smoke, I burned us an opening again. We went through, and I immediately dropped the core on the ground to open the house.

"We still have a lot of time until night," Mahya said.

"Yeah, I know," I said.

"But Al needs to get cooking. If that plant potion is going to save me from lashes, I'm not doing anything before it's ready." Mahya became visible just to make a face at me.

"Fine," she said, clearly unhappy.

"We'll split the crystals in the meantime." Al dropped a large pile of crystals onto the coffee table and headed for his lab. I went to make coffee, Rue flopped onto his beanbag for a snooze, and Mahya started counting. With coffee in hand, I joined her, and for the next hour the only sound was the soft clinking of the crystals. After we counted and split the piles, we stayed in the living room and talked.

The conversation drifted the way it always did, jumping from one subject to another, until we somehow ended up talking about the lightning birds that attacked us in the Genomey world. I still had no intention of ever saying or writing that horrible name again. That was when I remembered something unpleasant. The forest. The one that had spooked me so badly that I kept quiet about the dungeons inside it. I went silent, comparing that forest to this one.

Even though this world sat at mana 40 and the other had been mana 51, this place felt worse. More dangerous. And suddenly, sitting there with Mahya across from me, I had to admit to myself that hiding that information from her hadn't been cautious, but selfish. The thought made my stomach twist.

"What?" she asked.

"You went quiet all of a sudden." Her eyes narrowed.

"And now you look guilty." I reached into storage and pulled out my share of the crystals. Over three hundred of them, in all shapes and sizes. I set them down in front of her and pushed the pile across the table.

"These are yours." She stared at the crystals, then at me, clearly confused. I sighed.

"I need to confess to something. And that's my compensation." She got a suspicious expression.

"What did you do?"

"When we flew over that forest with the lightning birds," I said slowly, "I asked the wind like always." I swallowed.

"It told me there were several dungeons in there." Mahya froze.

"And you didn't say anything?"

"No." Her jaw tightened.

"Why not?" I rubbed my face with both hands.

"Because that forest scared the hell out of me. It was a mana 51 world, and it felt wrong. Really wrong." I dropped my hands and looked at her.

"But that wasn't the only reason. It was right after we'd spent a long time in vacation mode, and I didn't want to jump straight back into fighting again." I hesitated, then added, "And that forest… just remember all the roars and growls we heard while flying over it. I really didn't want to go in there." I nudged the crystals toward her again.

"I know those aren't cores. But I hope they'll help your core progress anyway." I met her eyes.

"I'm sorry." For a long moment, she said nothing. Then she swept the crystals into Storage, stood up, and walked toward her workshop without saying a word. The door slammed behind her. I slumped back into the couch and stared at the ceiling. Yeah. That had been a shitty thing to do. It took Al three days to make enough plant-killing potion. During that time, Mahya didn't speak to me at all. Al noticed, of course. He kept giving me questioning looks whenever the two of us crossed paths, but I just shook my head.

It was between the two of us. Mahya mostly disappeared into her workshop. Every few hours, she would come out, wordless and tight-jawed, and take it out on the sluggish monsters around the house. She chopped them into tiny pieces with extreme prejudice, movements sharp and angry, like every root she split was standing in for something else. Once the potion was ready, Al tested it, and it worked. The stuff harmed the root monsters.

It made them rot and grow even more sluggish, and it was especially effective against the lashing extensions. One or two sprays, and the thing pulled all the extensions in like a startled animal. The fire idea, sadly, was a bust. We hit them with Blazing Orbs. The monsters smoked a bit, but besides that, there was no actual damage. Just smoke and a light sizzling sound. One idea worked, the other didn't.

Still, with the potion making the roots more cautious about their whips, we at least had better odds against them. Mahya still wasn't talking to me. Three days was my limit. After dinner, once I cleared the table and cast Clean on the dishes, I followed her into her workshop.

"What do you want?" she snapped, not looking up.

"To talk."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"Seriously?" I asked.

"You know you're acting like a child, right?" That did it. She turned on me, and I could practically see the veins on her forehead standing out. Her jaw clenched, shoulders tight, hands curling into fists. I waved her off, the same way she usually waved me off.

"Don't act so offended. Yes, I should have told you, and yeah, it was a shitty thing to keep that from you, but it's not that big a deal."

"Not a big deal?" she shouted.

"How dare you? You betrayed me. You tried to shatter my dream. You tried to stop me from—""Oh, shut up!" I barked. She froze. Just stood there and stared at me, eyes wide, like she hadn't expected that word to come out of my mouth. I pointed at her.

"You've done plenty of shitty things during our travels. From your dismissiveness and condescension, to slapping me around while I said nothing, to acting like it was obvious all the cores were yours even though we got them together, and—" I stopped myself and took a deep breath.

"I'm not going to rehash everything." I exhaled slowly.

"We talked about all those things before. Sometimes you apologized, and sometimes I didn't call you on it. That's beside the point. Yes, I should have told you. I'm sorry I didn't." She opened her mouth, but I didn't let her interrupt.

"But when you did something shitty, we talked. You apologized, and that was that. Now I did something you're angry about. I said I'm sorry. And instead of talking, you decide to act like an offended diva." Her face only hardened further, and her clenched fist tightened until her knuckles went white. I shook my head, suddenly tired of the whole thing, and turned toward the door.

"Never mind. Forget I said anything. You're not me." I left the workshop without looking back. Something heavy hit the door behind me.