The Newt and Demon

Theo felt oddly relieved that nobody had a solution for the negative dungeon by the time he went to bed. He got to enjoy a pleasant dinner in his manor and the company of his friends without worrying about that situation. He had the unfortunate pleasure of being taken to that dungeon Tresk had delved in the Dreamwalk, though. It was just as horrible as he had remembered from sifting through her thoughts. The landscape made no sense, and it was filled with strange monsters he had never seen before.

One interesting thing to note about the Negative Dungeon was just how random the monsters were. Not only did they not follow a theme, but individual monsters could have great variations between them. Theo took a rabbit-type monster from Tresk’s memory as an example. One version could fight against her, while the other could barely move. Even between those different differences, there was even more variation.

"This is pure randomness," Theo said, looking around and unable to link any two things together. "It's like the negative level confused the system and now it doesn't know what to generate."

“Right?” Tresk asked as she punted a rabbit. “I’d be laughing if it wasn’t so horrifying.”

High above lingered the form of Frank. It was more impressive than anything else within the Dreamwalk version of the Negative Dungeon. It sailed through unseen clouds, emitting a sonorous song. When it angled itself too close to the ground and emitted a massive blast of wind that nearly shook both Theo and Tresk from their feet. He couldn't say whether the monster was based on something in the real world, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to find out.

Tresk held her hand down, a mischievous smile spreading across her face. "I want to test something," she said.

Before Theo could command her to do otherwise, she had tossed the improvised explosive high into the air. It sailed far away from their position, perhaps driven by some imagination on her part. While the Dreamwalk had been picky lately, it was happy to simulate what would happen if Tresk threw a nuke at the giant whale. This time Theo was actually blown from his feet, tumbling onto the ground from the shockwave alone. The wide-open landscape gave no breaks to the force of the explosion.

"More warning next time," Theo said, dusting himself off as he stood.

But the whale didn't seem damaged at all. From his sense that spread through the Dreamwalk, Theo could tell that the monster had taken exactly no damage. He realized now that Tresk's assessment of the level ranges within the dungeon was wrong. This thing was likely far above level 100, and he would be surprised if it was anything less than level 1000.

Which made it even more important for them to find a solution to this problem. It wouldn't be a simple problem to solve, as most things that went weird in Broken Tusk ended up being complex and difficult to solve problems. He closed his eyes and remembered defeating the beast that lurked under the mine. At least that was simple. Just toss it off a cliff and watch it die under a hail of fire from rail guns. That was a simple solution.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

With that thought, Theo changed the landscape before them. He had lost interest in the weird dungeon and didn't want to think too much about it. Instead, he envisioned Broken Tusk a few hours ago. Instead of the normal version of Broken Tusk, he envisioned one overlaid with his magical senses. Thanks to his Shadow-aligned core, he could produce the effects of somebody with enhanced magical senses without doing the training. It was a swirl of different energies.

"I wanted to look at the whale some more," Tresk said, crossing her arms.

"I wanted you to look at this," Theo said, gesturing to the strands of magical power. "Notice anything strange?"

"Yeah, this isn't normally how I see the world," Tresk said. "But I don't notice anything different. Looks normal based on the memories you have."

"Yet it shouldn't be normal," he said. "Remember, we took in a bunch of space elves. We should be looking at a swirl of void magic. But I only see one strand."

Tresk squinted, sorting through the various strands of power until she found the void. It coiled near the ground, shooting up into the air and then heading west. Theo could practically feel her mind rolling the information over. She made connections between things they had seen in the past and what they understood about how this power worked. If there was ever an expert on heavenly energy, Theo was it.

"Something is absorbing that power," Tresk said. "Wait, is that possible?"

“Our Dungeons did the same thing,” Theo said, “but something tells me this isn't a dungeon. Something else in the world is drawing the power in. Which is strange, seeing as that something would need to be powerful to pull it in from so far away.”

"Oh, another mystery," Tresk said, rubbing his hands together.

Theo wouldn't tell her that he was almost certain he knew what was absorbing the energy. He kept it to himself and guarded that part of his mind so she couldn't pluck it. It wasn't super important, but sometimes it was nice to have some things hidden from her, if only for his own sanity.

After exploring the few mysteries that had popped up in the town over the past few days, Theo and Tresk broke off into their own forms of training. She fawned over Alex's new appearance and took a while to get used to her new look. After that, they were off on whatever little adventures they went on. Theo spent his time in the Dreamwalk practicing various forms of alchemy. Unfortunately, it wouldn't let him touch fermentation. Salire was working on that back in the real world, but since he hadn't discovered its exact function, the Dreamwalk was still finicky.

When the Dreamwalk finally ended, the pair went downstairs to have breakfast. Sarisa and Rowan had already prepared a meal of sausages, eggs, and the local equivalent of buttered grits. Theo was happy to eat the meal, starting with the grits, moving to the eggs, and ending with the sausages; he liked to leave the best for last nowadays. When the meal was done, he half expected Tresk to go off on her own adventures. But he remembered how she had glued herself to his hip in recent days. Whatever made her happy.

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“I need you to check on the mine if you could,” Theo said as they were leaving the manor. “After that, if you could double check the dungeons, that would be lovely.”

Tresk needed no further instructions. She vanished off to find Alex and then to the mine. He knew he could trust her to do the job correctly. Without hesitation, he then made his way to the Newt and Demon to see how his apprentice was doing for the day. Even before entering the building, he could smell brewing potions. A sign in the front was flipped to open, and there was an elven man working the counter that he didn't recognize. With only the briefest of nods, he headed upstairs.

The second-floor stills were occupied by an assortment of restoration essences. They were all running and in various stages of completion. Theo inspected the half-full flasks to check for quality. Salire had made great strides in recent days on her quality, and every new batch she ran seemed to be better. He then made his way to the third floor and was unsurprised to see more of the soul and mind potions being brewed. ṝ

Salire looked as though she had woken four hours before dawn only to come here and work. Her hair was a mess, and she wore a leather apron over a basic shirt and slacks. When she turned to him, it seemed as though she could only barely manage a smile. She just nodded and got back to work.

"We are completely out of Soul Bloom," Salire said, shaking her head.

"We have enough though, don't we?" Theo said, inspecting the completed essences resting on a table.

“More than enough, actually. And that's good news. I know how you like to have a surplus.”

Theo walked around the third floor of the lab, double-checking that everything seemed to be going well. Indeed, the quality that Elise had been producing was more than sufficient for what they needed to do. Both her restorative potions and these new reforging potions were all coming out at extremely high qualities. As long as they kept it below the real version of tier 3, everything would be fine.

“So I think I've figured out as much as I can about fermentation. As you had expected from the description of the skill, there's not much difference. It's just about the same thing, with mana injection and all that being important.”

"That's good. The last thing we need is for more systems to change. Have you made anything with the fermented modifiers?"

"Not yet, but there's not much room to do anything but create these potions," Elise said, drawing her mouth into a tight line. “I think we'll be on Tero’gal before I have any chance to test that.”

"That's fine," Theo said, waving her concerns away. "We should be more concerned with creating as many practical things as we can to help us in the meantime. As we saw with the negative dungeon, this world isn't done throwing us curveballs."

Both Theo and Salire had a decent understanding of how their new form of alchemy worked. Theo was certain that something more would change when the reset happened, but he figured that his planet was consistent, if nothing else. Things might change, but the principles would be the same. So it was more important than ever to understand every single facet in excruciating detail.

The alchemist was broken from his thoughts when a set of footsteps came up the stairs. The door to the lab swung open, and a bedraggled Xol’sa stood, heaving for breath.

"We might have an issue," he said, looking between Theo and Salire. "Could we speak in private?"

Theo nodded, joining the wizard down the stairs, out of the lab, and back to his manor. Once they were settled in the massive dining room, he made them some tea as they sat down. He slid a cup of moss tea across the table, taking his own seat and breathing in the scent of the earthy aroma.

"Do you remember how we were concerned about the void energy from my people?" Xol’sa asked.

“Actually, I have some information on that,” Theo said, "I'm guessing you sensed the direction of the energy."

“Yes, actually I did. I didn't think your magical senses were powerful enough to detect it, but what have you figured out?”

Theo smiled to himself, happy to outmagic the mage for once in his life. But this had become his specialty. He was very good at dealing with void energy, and he wasn't certain if it was a title he was proud to carry. It came with a lot of complications that put him in the center of attention of many powerful people.

“All I have is a suspicion,” Theo explained. “The way that the energy was drawn from the air into the dungeons was strange, but our dungeons were already experiencing a weird drain before that happened.”

"I have theories about that as well," Xol’sa said. "There is something in the system in this world that's dying. Likely part of the reset."

“Well, concerning that, I think the system is getting impatient with me. It's taken me longer than I expected to get everything lined up, so it's starting a bit early.”

"And how does that help us?" Xol’sa asked. "Seems as though we want our planet to remain intact while we're fixing it."

“I'm getting to it. So, the issue comes when we think of how the dungeons absorbed the power that came into this world. It was a foreign power, so it went to the dungeons first. The first thing that would absorb it, right?”

“I think I’m following,” Xol’sa said, leaning over the table as though being closer would help him hear better.

“Anyway, I'll stop with the dramatics. I believe there's at least one shard remaining on the planet.”

"How could you possibly know?"

"I'm unofficially in charge of them," Theo said, nodding to himself. "I feel a certain connection to them, even if I haven't restored any. And the true guardian of these shards let his hand slip, even if he didn't mean to. I know that guy is powerful, but in some ways he seems kind of naive.”

"Reminds me of someone," Xol’sa muttered.

“Anyway, he had explained his transportation ability to me. He can swap positions with his pet whenever he wants. When I met with him, we talked briefly. And then he vanished. Except he didn't vanish and become a bird or a tiger. He didn't swap positions with his pet. He teleported away in another way.”

"Which must have left behind a magical signature," Xol’sa said.

“He has the faintest magical signature of the shards themselves. I've spent enough time with them, even if they're inactive, to recognize it. Thanks to Shadow’s aura, I can understand the basics.”

“Your assumption is based on the fact that he can't traverse the void, or perhaps you're thinking he can't teleport to an inactive shard.”

“Either way, I think he teleported away to a shard that's still on this planet. And that's the very same shard that our void energy is being drawn to.”

Xol’sa snapped his fingers. "Well, that solves another one of our problems, doesn't it?"

Theo smiled as he nodded. "Yeah, we don't have to worry about how to activate him now. Since this guy clearly knows what he's doing." He produced a communication crystal from his inventory. “Why don’t we give him a call?”