Chương 85: B2—Chapter 16: I Have No Words … Wow, Just Wow!

Once I reached Balma and followed Lis's instructions, he sent me a WhatsApp location about half an hour's drive away, along with a note.

"When you get to the driveway, stop, but don't get out of the car. I will come to pick you up." The location led me to a farm outside Balma, with an access road that looked abandoned. After reaching the gate, I parked and called Lis. He arrived a few minutes later, pulled me into a tight hug, and clapped me on the back.

"It's good to see you, my friend." He scratched Rue's neck and was rewarded with an enthusiastic round of face licks. Chuckling, he straightened and looked at me.

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes." Rubbing his hands together as if he were about to close a deal, he grinned.

"Excellent. I'm going to blindfold you and lead you inside. Don't peek, and follow my instructions." He tied a thick black cloth over my eyes, the fabric soft but completely opaque, then rested his hands on my shoulders and guided me forward with a firm grip. Rue's voice exploded in my mind.

"RUE! NO! TELL! LIS! NO! TELL!"

"Lis told you not to tell me what you see?"

"YES!"

"No problem, buddy," I said, chuckling.

"Don't tell me. Friends don't tell their friends' secrets." After about ten meters, Lis spoke again.

"There are a few steps now, and then I will lead you inside." The air shifted as we entered a building; the warmth of the interior was a sharp contrast to the cold outside.

"Do you trust me completely?" Lis asked, his voice closer now, almost a whisper.

"Yes, without a shadow of a doubt."

"Excellent. I need to cut your palm and draw some blood. You can heal yourself right after. Then I will need a few minutes, and after that, I will tell you what to do next."

"OK." I felt the brief sting as he cut my palm and pressed my hand to draw the blood. When he was done, his footsteps retreated. A moment later, Mahya's familiar presence wrapped around me as she hugged me tightly.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too, both of you," I said.

"The first few days, I felt a little lost on my own."

"Did it get better?"

"Yeah." I smiled.

"Rue helped, and I had homework to keep me busy." Lis spoke again from farther away.

"Did you manage to build a spell?"

"Not yet," I said, a little sheepish.

"But I'm working on it. I built a fire dart. Now I'm trying to make it fly."

"Excellent," he said, sounding pleased. Mahya and I kept talking for another fifteen minutes until Lis's footsteps approached again.

"Everything is ready. I'm going to place you in the middle of a ritual circle. You need to bend down, and I will position your hands. Once you're set, channel mana until you no longer feel the need. You will know when to stop, but you will probably get a slight headache. When it fades, you will become aware of something new, but don't explore it. Hold back. I will need another minute after that, then we will take off your blindfold, and you can see the surprise."

"OK," I said, and let him guide me into position. I poured mana until I couldn't anymore. Pressure built in my head, growing tighter and tighter, until it flared into a sharp pain and then abruptly stopped. It felt as if my mind had expanded and now held something inside it. The impression of a house surfaced, but I stopped myself and didn't dig any deeper. Mahya removed the blindfold. I blinked and took it in. I stood on the first floor of a house. To my right was the kitchen, most of it visible at a glance.

A breakfast bar with high chairs separated it from the living room, and several light fixtures hung above. One of them tugged at my attention, and I sensed a connection to it. Lis noticed my gaze.

"It's always good to hide things in plain sight." I didn't get what he meant, but filed the question away for later. The living room held sofas, armchairs, and beanbags arranged around a low table. A fireplace was set into a supporting stone pillar at the far side, with stairs running beside it. Large windows filled the wall on the left. Behind me stood a door flanked by two more windows. Above the kitchen was a mezzanine lined with bookshelves and sofas. It was strange.

I both saw the space and felt it in my head, as if it were part of me.

"Why do I feel the house?" I asked, turning to Lis.

"I get that it's because of the ritual, but how? I don't understand what's going on."

"This is your new home away from home." He swept a hand around like a game show host presenting a prize.

"This is the project Mahya and I have been working on with all those blueprints. We built the house around a dungeon core and performed a ritual to turn you into the dungeon master."

"My house is a dungeon?" That didn't sound good. Lis chuckled.

"Not exactly. It's built around a dungeon core, but it won't behave like a typical dungeon. The house channels the mana from the core into its functions, while special filters divert the trash mana out to prevent monster creation." Before I could ask more, Mahya stepped closer, a playful grin spreading across her face.

"Want a tour?" Her eyes sparkled with excitement.

"Of course!" I grinned back, eager to see what else they'd built. They led me outside, and I took in the house properly. It stood on a raised platform with short stilts, adjusted to the contours of the ground. Wooden stairs led up to a porch that wrapped around three sides of the building. It had two floors, and above them, an attic with a single window. It was beautiful. I looked around in awe.

"Did you do all this in five weeks?"

"Not exactly," Mahya said, smiling.

"We've been working on it for over a year, whenever you weren't with us. Lis started converting electrical appliances to mana back in England. He didn't get his class because of the mini radio; it was because all your kitchen appliances run on mana. The radio was just a cover. We bought the rest of the equipment and hid it in Storage. When you trained with him, I worked on the wooden parts, and when you trained with me, he focused on the other systems.

Once everything was ready, all we had left was assembly and the final enchantments." Stolen story; please report.

"This is amazing," I said. Lis grinned with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Raise the house a meter."

"How?" I asked, frowning.

"Just will it. You're the dungeon master." His tone made it sound like the most obvious thing in the world. I focused for a moment, and the house responded. The stairs extended along with it. Where there had been six steps before, there were now eleven.

"Cool! The stairs extend!" I said, staring down at them.

"Look under the house," Lis said, his voice carrying the promise of another surprise. I bent down and spotted several rolled-up rubber shapes tucked beneath the structure.

"What's that?"

"Heavy-duty commercial-grade inflatable bridge pontoons," Lis explained, crouching beside me and pointing.

"I added them to my house too. They're virtually indestructible. I checked. You can park your house on a lake or a river, but don't try sailing it. There's no steering."

"Every wooden plank the house is made of is enchanted, too," Mahya added as she stepped closer.

"It can take powerful attacks and shrug them off, and if something does get damaged, the wood will regenerate." Lis straightened and brushed off his hands.

"Activate the protections." I willed it, and wooden shutters slid down over every window. At the same time, I felt a force field snap into place around the house, tracing the line of the porch railings. Lis nodded, satisfied.

"The field you're feeling absorbs mana. Any spell cast on the house will be absorbed instead of causing damage, and the mana will be channeled into the core. Anything with hostile intent that touches the field will have its mana absorbed and redirected the same way." I frowned, still trying to wrap my head around it.

"How does the house know they have hostile intent?"

"Magic can read intention. Haven't you figured that out yet?"

"I didn't think it could read intent to this level," I admitted, rubbing the back of my neck.

"But if I have the house's protective field, why are the shutters there?"

"Physical attacks."

"Oh."

"You have control over the defenses," Lis continued, his tone more serious.

"I noticed you didn't like my house killing the snakes, so I didn't add automatic defenses to yours. But if the house is attacked, you can activate the second stage, and whatever attacks it will be struck by lightning." They led me into the kitchen and started showing me around. A silver, two-door refrigerator from Earth stood against one wall. When I opened it, it looked completely normal, but it ran on mana.

There was a large sink with hot and cold water, four cooking plates identical to those in Lis's house, crystals and all, a regular oven, a pizza oven with a stone base, and plenty of storage space for dishes. Hanging from the ceiling were six light fixtures. One of them was the dungeon core. I finally understood what Lis meant about hiding things in plain sight.

"You don't have to channel your own mana to fill the crystals," Lis said, gesturing around the kitchen.

"The core handles that, even with Earth's low mana levels. Under the entire first floor, there's a water reservoir. I don't know exactly how many gallons it holds, but it's a lot. All the water in the house circulates through Clean and Purify spells, returning to the reservoir pristine. Every so often, when you're near a river, you should top it up. You can even draw from the sea or a swamp. The water will still end up pristine."

"How do I fill it?" Lis walked over to a kitchen cupboard and opened it. Inside was a very long fire hose, neatly rolled up. He glanced back at me.

"Put the end of the hose in a water source, tell the house to take it in, and it will do the rest." From there, he led me to a door beside the refrigerator. It opened into a room stretching the full length of the house behind the kitchen. Tatami mats covered the floor. Runes covered the walls, and mana crystals were embedded throughout, faintly glinting in the light.

"Store the mats." I did and revealed runes and crystals beneath them as well. This room held most of the crystals we'd collected from the snake cave and harvested from the monsters.

"This is a magic practice room," Lis said, gesturing around the space.

"Every wizard I've ever met had something like this. You can work on spells here, and the room will stay intact no matter what happens. All the magic you use gets channeled back into the core. It's also completely insulated for rituals." He paused, then added, "Will the floor to transform into a ritual configuration." It took me a second to figure out how, but once I focused, the runes and crystals slowly sank into the floor, disappearing from sight. Mahya stepped closer and nodded approvingly.

"Even if you need to engrave a ritual directly into the floor," she said, "it'll return to normal once you switch it back to the practice-room configuration." By that point, I was completely speechless, unable to believe what I was seeing. Lis went on, his tone turning instructional.

"You can will the crystals to absorb all ambient mana in the room, creating a neutral ritual space. You can also tell the core to insulate the room and absorb all mana, creating a dead zone where you can safely mess with all the electronics you keep buying." He shot me a warning look.

"Just remember to store them before you open the door, or the mana from the rest of the house will fry them. You can also have the core release more mana into the room for faster regeneration, but don't overdo it right now. With Earth's mana levels, the core is still pretty empty. In higher mana worlds, preferably above thirty, you can go wild." He pointed to a pedestal in the corner, where the large crystal we'd taken from the mommy snake stood.

"Change that crystal's aspect to lightning."

"Now?" I asked, looking to him for confirmation.

"Yes." It took a solid twenty minutes of wrestling with the crystal—it really didn't want to turn electric—but eventually, it gave in.

"Done," I said, wiping sweat from my forehead. Lis pointed to two rows of electrical sockets built into the pedestal's legs.

"Let the crystal refill from the core. After that, you can drain the room of mana, turn it into a dead zone, and charge your electric toys here. To be safe, test it with something small you're not afraid to lose. I couldn't test it myself without the right aspect, but it should work." From there, they led me upstairs to the mezzanine, which ran the full length of the house and was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Three armchairs formed a cozy reading nook, with two giant beanbags nearby.

Rue jumped onto one beanbag, settled in, and shouted into my mind,"MINE!" Chuckling, I shook my head.

"Enjoy, buddy. This is officially your beanbag." The ceiling up there was low, barely five centimeters above my head. Anyone taller would have to stoop, but for reading, it was perfect. We climbed another set of stairs to the second floor. On one side of the hall were two medium-sized, empty rooms with a shared shower and toilet. There was no bath, just the shower. Unlike the one in Lis's house, the toilet here was a regular Earth-style one, with Void and Purify crystals embedded in the wall to its right.

Each room also had its own small balcony. On the other side of the hall was the master bedroom, also empty, with an enormous bathroom that included a toilet, a bath, and a shower. One wall was a floor-to-ceiling window that opened onto a large balcony. At the end of the hall, a final staircase led up to the attic. The attic spanned the entire footprint of the house. Bookshelves lined the walls, sloping down with the roof. Folders packed with papers filled some of them.

On the opposite side were more shelves holding large, rolled sheets of paper and parchment. In the center of the space, which was tall enough to stand comfortably, were two seating areas. One seating area had sofas and armchairs around a low table; the other had chaise lounges and beanbags clustered around another. By the window stood a massive desk with an armchair on one side and two chairs opposite it, and near the door was a large drawing table. Mahya spoke first.

"The folders contain all the knowledge I could gather from the engineering skills I bought from the Guidance. It's not the same as formally studying, but between that and the experience I gained from space flight and working on the planet we planned to colonize, I've learned a lot. Power plants that convert matter into energy, spaceship engines, and crystalline matrices for AI. The rolled pages are the drawings that go with the written material." Lis followed.

"All the parchments are the blueprints for the house. That includes every enchantment and electrical appliance, as well as various Magitech devices I've conceptualized. I haven't built or tested them, but they should work. Some folders combine everything I've learned in engineering with my magic knowledge, aided by my Mind Index. It should give you a deep understanding of how the house works and how to build things in the future."

I stood there, overwhelmed, my mind struggling to process, and all I could do was whisper, "Wow." Over and over. I turned to Mahya, the rush of emotion hitting me all at once, and pulled her into a tight hug.

"I don't have words for how grateful I am for everything you've done," I said, my voice thick. She hugged me back, then pulled away just enough to look me in the eye.

"You saved my life, repaired my mana system, and stood by me for a long time," she said softly.

"This isn't even a tenth of what you deserve. But I'll accept the thanks." I stepped over to Lis and wrapped him in a hug as well.

"Thank you," I whispered.

"I really don't have words." He returned the hug firmly, then leaned back slightly, meeting my gaze with a gentle smile.

"You don't need to thank me. You helped me when I needed it. I helped you when you needed it. That's how friendship works." I could only nod. My throat closed up, and tears blurred my vision as I stood there, overwhelmed and deeply grateful for the friends who had done so much for me.