Mya sniffed the air. "Zaria, I smell 'Death's Berries'."

"Where?" Zaria perked up.

"Oh god!" The caravan leader kept an ear on the four weirdos. "How far away are they?"

"A minute or two at our speed that way." Mya declared.

"If that were true we'd all be dead." The caravan leader denied.

"She said our speed, as in the speed of us four," Levi explained.

"In short, far away enough that this caravan would need weeks to get there." Noire clarified.

Zaria pulled out a basket and lifted it. "Soo, who thinks some Death Berry Jam is in our future?"

"Are you trying to kill us all?" An adventurer accused them.

The four gave the adventurer a confused look. "Why should we?" "We are not sharing the jam." "There are easier ways to get yourself killed." "It is ours."

"You are going to eat it?" There was utter disbelief in the voice.

Zaria pulled out a jar that scared the animals, and made everyone aside from the eight small girls feel complete and utter dread as if they were staring at their death.

"Why does that exist?" An adventurer stammered out.

""""It is delicious!"""" Four voices replied.

The four helpers stared at the jar curiously.

"Doesn't the scent alone kill everything?"

"Not us." Mya licked her lips. "It is sweet, delicious, and absolutely to die for."

"Literally." Noire nodded. "I was out on a sugar high for a day."

Levi nodded. "So good, it tastes great with fish and meat too."

Zaria rubbed her cheek against her jar, creeping everyone but her friends out.

"Alright, we are going off to gather them." Mya nudged Zaria.

The albino put the jar back away and picked up her basket. "Lead the way, Mya."

"I'll stay." Noire declared. "So will I." Levi informed them.

The two disappeared from view. They ran with Mya leading with her nose, she had the right nose for sniffing out death. A little later Zaria picked up the scent as well.

The duo entered a death zone moments later, nothing lived there, aside from the large bush with black berries literally oozing death.

The two floofs licked their lips. Aside from them and the others on their level, nobody was able to survive the berries. They were literally Death in the form of berries. To no surprise they were Mya's favourite, everyone else avoided those bushes and their death zones.

The pair happily collected the delicious death in berry form.

---

"Are they seriously going to bring those here?" An adventurer asked.

"Only if you count them being stored away." Noire advised.

Levi snorted amused. "You know, Zaria is weird, those berries are probably one of the least dangerous things that she has stored away."

"What?"

"Like what?" An adventurer asked in utter disbelief.

"Cursed items." "Curses." "Deadly Poisons." "Deadly Weapons." "Crystalized Mana." "Condensed Divinity." "Alchemy Accidents." "Banana Peels."

"How does a banana peel kill you?" Someone asked.

Noire and Levi shuddered. "The banana peel makes you wish you were dead." "That thing is a menace." "It is the worst." "Others might kill you, this one will annoy you." "That thing is so cursed that it ruined civilisations." "It is useful against armies, but catching it again?" "If there is one thing that she should have never created, it is the banana peel." "Hell uses it as a punishment, and they keep on begging her to take it back." "Well, they annoyed her."

The berry-gathering duo returned.

The humans all moved several steps back, as if a few steps would have made a difference.

"Did you get them?" The other two were sounding eager.

"Two small baskets full!" Mya bragged.

"I will be back later, I want to make the jam now in my kitchen, hold the fort meanwhile," Zaria told the two. "Let's hope that Tama is deeply asleep or she will want some and will try to sneak a few bites while I make it." She popped out with a quick teleport.

"I know what I want to eat for dinner, the jam with a nice wyvern steak." Levi declared.

"You are kidding me." Someone asked full of disbelief.

"No, but we probably should eat at our normal spot." Mya bounced on her toes.

Noire nodded. "Good idea, probably should keep the mass extinction events down."

Levi agreed as well. "And keep the dead zones down, they are annoying to clean up."

"You can fix dead zones?" The caravan leader asked.

"Yes, it is not hard, just really annoying since the clean-up depends on what caused them in the first place." Noire explained.

Levi shook her head. "Or you can brute force it, wasn't that how Zaria created the ancient forest actually?"

Mya frowned cutely. "Yes, I remember that, some idiot tried to destroy the shrine, naturally they failed, then Zaria overreacted, and created a dead zone."

Noire smirked. "When it comes to Tama, she does that a lot."

"So true." "Absolutely."

"Is it really that good?" Risa finally asked.

"Yes, it is, but it is beyond your capabilities to eat. Even with all our blessings you will die if you eat it." Noire rubbed Risa's head. "Some things are beyond mortal grasp."

"What she means is that you need to be immortal and really powerful," Levi added. "Helena would die, as would most other gods."

"Whose turn is it?" Mya asked, changing the topic. "Three trolls ahead."

"I can't remember," Noire replied honestly.

"Start over?" Levi offered.

"Let the other adventurers work?" Mya decided to push it onto the others.

"Three trolls?" The adventurers were rather panicked. "That is a disaster!"

"Trolls are a disaster?" Levi wondered. "I only know sea trolls. Are ground trolls actually dangerous?" Trolls were simply bigger goblins to her.

"No, I don't remember them being anything special." Noire dug through her memories. "The most dangerous part about them is their smell." The vampiress shuddered. "They absolutely stink."

"The smell isn't deadly, they are pretty strong compared to normal people." Mya knew how many people tended to die from trolls. It was part of her job after all. "So there are a few thousand deaths a year from trolls. Their stench can stun people with good senses."

"Kon~"

"Yuki?" The seven little girls saw the arctic fox there instead of the albino fox.

"Kon kon kon!" Yuki explained.

"Zaria will drop by later, it seems that she is busy with divine complaints," Mya explained.

"Did Yuki just call the gods wastes of space?" Risa asked.

Everyone turned towards Risa as they walked alongside the caravan.

"You understood her?" Levi asked, really curious.

"Yes?" Risa looked confused. "She clearly insulted them like those noble do to us orphans."

Yuki snickered and dodged when Noire swiped at her. The rip in the ground was sealed back up when Levi waved her hand.

Mya suddenly smirked. "It is your turn, Yuki."

"Kon?"

"Three trolls." Noire quickly figured out what Mya wanted to do.

Levi nodded as well. "Since Zaria ran off, it is your turn to deal with them."

Yuki shrugged, which looked very odd on a fox. She darted off past the quarrelling adventurers and caravan leader.

"A fox?" One of the adventurers remarked.

That stopped the quarrel.

Incredibly the fox summoned three icicles. The icicles were sharp, jagged, and started spinning as they hovered above the fox. The icicles were far larger than the fox too.

Three trolls broke through the treeline.

Three icicles broke through the sound barrier.

Three troll torsos were shredded while the limbs and heads froze, flying off and shattering.

There was a moment of silence.

"Yuki is brutal as always," Mya sighed.

The humans all looked towards the cat who just called the fox brutal. For them, all four were simply illogical dangerous existences, or rather five now.

"Kon kon." Yuki sat down and waited for the rest to catch up. When they did, she chatted with Risa. Much to the confusion of the other three helpers.

Noire rubbed her temples. "I suspected it, but she got approved."

Levi was giggling. "She did tell Tama she wanted a tail and she is praying to Zaria's tails."

"Fey and spirits like her too." Mya gave a catty smirk. "I guess it was inevitable."

"How does that work? Is it dangerous?" Anne asked worriedly.

Noire reached up and petted Anne soothingly. "No worries, she likes tails, she asked for a tail, she is friendly with the fey, and finally both Tamamo no Mae and Zaria like her or find her amusing."

"What Noire is trying to say, she is already a fey friend and on the way to changing race," Levi explained.

Mya nodded in agreement. "No worries, she will either become a fey or some fluffy race." She swished her two tails.

"I want to be an angel," Olivia mumbled.

"They heard you, so an ascension is not impossible," Noire told the girl calmly.

"Ascension?" Olivia asked.

"To become an angel you ascend, why that race change is called ascension I don't know," Noire admitted. "Probably because it makes the gods feel more important."

"Is there a race that would make me better at magic?" Ciel asked as she hovered a wobbly waterball above her palm.

"Plenty, many make you better as racial magics." Levi pointed at herself. "As the Leviathan I am superior in water, ice, force, pressure, space, gravity, and amusingly lava magic."

"I am Death's Nekomata, and yes that is my actual race." Mya covered herself in a black cloak with a cat-eared hood and held a black scythe. "I am superior in death, time, space, spirit, soul, darkness, light, and life magic."

"Since everyone is introducing their specialities." Noire twirled her umbrella. "As the First Vampire I am superior in blood, shadow, curse, darkness, reinforcement, transformation, and weirdly enough healing."

"What about Zaria?" Ciel wondered.

"Depends on who you ask?" "She knows all magic, she has favourites and some she is better at." "She makes no sense." "She is fey, a goddess, kitsune, and who knows what else." "Her favourites are teleportation, transformation, time, space, bacon, and naturally cooking." "She uses ice, fire, lightning, and whatever she wants whenever she wants." "Sometimes she goes oops when she acts before thinking." "Like that time she created a forest out of nothing in a desert when those sand worms tried to bury her?" "Or the time she overloaded that civilisation that created the magic power plants." "Remember that civilization that called themselves gods and declared all true gods their slaves." "Ouch." "Mega ouch"

Everyone stared when the overpowered trio winced.

"What did she do?" Anne asked.

Olivia shook her head. "They deserved it."

Mya nodded in agreement. "They even called themselves masters of death. Zaria got to them before I did."

"You heard of the glass desert?" Levi asked. "That is what is left."

"Oh." Anne had heard of it. It was a huge expanse made out of glass. Everything was glass. Cracked ground made out of glass, everything was just types of glassed rock.

"She called me to fix the weather," Levi added. "I had to drown the area in rain to cool it down, together we froze the area and warmed it back up to normal temperatures."

"But you still forgot it is all glass, the whole area is now overheating regularly," Mya complained. "It is a death zone, you know."

"Imagine all that glass reflecting sunlight over and over, cracking under the temperature. During the day it is a hell of light. During the night it is cooling and cracking and creating yet more shards of glass." Noire was a living vampire, but she disliked the sun. That meant that the glass desert was a place that she really hated.

"Kon."

"I don't think so." Risa replied to Yuki.

"Kon kon kon?"

"Sounds too cold."

"Kon kon~"

"I don't have a mate to cuddle with." Risa frowned. "What is a mate?"

"I think you humans call them husbands or wives," Noire told the girl.

Mya tilted her head confused. "Cuddle partner, dedicated petting partner and groomer."

"Is that like Tama and Zaria?" Risa asked.

"No" "Yes" "Maybe" The trio was not sure how to define the relationship of those two.

---

Watching Risa chasing Yuki across the noon camp was funny, especially with the vixen running around with a toast in her mouth, stolen from Risa, and the girl waving a knife at the fox.

"Why is she hunting Yuki when she can simply take a new one?" Levi asked as she did just that. Pick up a nice hot toast with ham and cheese.

The apricot jam toasts were very popular too, sweet and buttery.

"I prefer bacon," Mya admitted.

Noire nodded. "I really like her bacon, I have no idea where she gets so much of it from."

Levi shrugged and pulled a huge bacon slab out. "I think she somehow has access to endless bacon."

"I wouldn't be surprised, or she made enough of it over the millennia to never run out." Noire was undecided. "I stopped thinking about it millennia ago."

"So did I." "Me too."

"Risa, stop chasing Yuki, you need to eat more." Noire reminded the girl.

"Yuki, stop playing with Risa."

"Kon kon."

"Does food you take from someone else really taste better?" Risa stopped to ask the others about Yuki's comment.

"No" "Yes" "No" "I don't think so." "Yes" "Naturally" "Why should it?" "A lot better" This time even adventurers and caravan members replied.

"I'd take some of the food if I thought I could get away with it." The caravan leader admitted while staring at the various toasts, the half-full pot of stew, and the cake baking in a pan.

The other adults nodded.

Risa decided to ignore the vixen and took a sweet toast this time. Yuki ate the one she stole and took one with egg, bacon, tomato, and cheese instead.

The girls were eating happily. Since meeting their new bosses, they had eaten more in a few days than they usually did in a month. Anne especially saw the difference, she actually had more muscles now and none of them looked like sticks ready to break any more. She knew this was not normal, not even with eating so much. She simply blamed their bosses, probably rightfully so.

"Zaria does not seem like a Goddess," Olivia complained.

"Technically, we all are." Mya corrected. "We just don't belong to a pantheon."

"Actually, Zaria would count under Tama's pantheon." Noire reminded them.

Levi shook her head. "I am pretty sure Tama is the last member of the original pantheon."

"Really, wasn't there a cat or something?" Noire had a feeling there was someone else alive.

The trio pondered.

"Kon kon"

"That cat goddess is working as a shrine maiden at Zaria's shrine?" Risa asked.

Mya giggled again. "I wonder if Zaria knows."

"I doubt she cares." Levi was more realistic.

Noire changed the topic for something more important. "Who wants cake?"

Six hands and a paw rose.

"Everyone then." Noire smiled, it was fun walking with others. "We will leave a slice for Zaria."

"How nice of you to do so." Zaria was back. "I was out of faery sugar, so I had to get some. Afterwards Helena sent complaints from the gods, so I offered to summon one of them the next time we needed one. For some reason they all decided to stop complaining."

"Since it is done, we are using that jam at the next meet-up," Levi demanded while ignoring the gods.

"Is it cooling and ageing properly?" Noire asked worriedly as the second-best cook in the group. Naturally, she ignored the gods as well.

Mya nodded, wriggling in her seat. "I hope you warned everyone so they don't approach and kill themselves." Like the others, complaints from gods meant nothing to her.

"No worries," Zaria smirked. "Whoever manages to get into that storage room, is either strong or good enough to survive." With that, Zaria washed her hands of all responsibility.

After the small lunch the caravan packed up, the girls were asked to replace a few of the empty food crates and water barrels with full ones from their storage spaces. The girls continued their lessons in breaking common sense, magic, history, cooking, and basic education like mathematics. Seeing numbers and letters floating around was a bit distracting but honestly, the caravan leader felt safer than he had ever before.

"Kon kon."

"Hmpf"

The comedy skit of Yuki prodding Risa and Risa ignoring Yuki was amusing.

"Why is Yuki coming along?" Levi asked Zaria.

"Because she wanted to?" The albino replied.

"And who is watching Tama?" Mya asked in case there was going to be a sudden rush of work.

"A certain dragon decided it was time for a nice long nap, and that my shrine was the best place to do that," Zaria explained. "A murderbun dropped by to restock on carrots and carrot cake. Somehow, our wolf puppy got wind of our feast last night and is decimating the mountain of skewers. Finally, a certain slime oozed into the wine cellar." Basically, the remaining four active powers had all gathered at her shrine. It was now the most dangerous place in the world. And the most secure one.

That explained at least why both Zaria and Yuki were present.

Attacking the shrine now was beyond stupid. Keeping them from their naps, carrots, snacks, and wine was a quick way to die. Empires had been crushed for less in the past.

"Kon kon."

"I am not giving you my dessert next time." Risa declined Yuki's request.

"This is so weird," Ciel told the other helpers.

"Wait until she starts to talk to spirits and fey that only she can see." Zaria did not calm the helpers at all. "Don't worry, she is safe."

"As safe as someone liked by spirits and fey can be, anyway." Levi corrected.

Mya did not help in dispelling any doubts. "She will probably change race soon."

"Does that mean that humans being the beloved race of the gods is untrue?" Olivia asked something that had been on her mind since she had seen the interactions with the goddesses and after hearing that the four were goddesses as well.

"That depends on the gods," Noire informed the girl. "Some care for race, like those of the human pantheon, the elvish pantheon, and so on. Most gods don't care."

"Most gods only care about their followers," Mya explained. "And only those they deem worthy, as in really worthy, can enter their realms. Everyone else either roasts in hell for a while and gets reborn, or gets stuck in heaven until the world or the related pantheon ends."

"In short, unless a goddess or god really likes you, you get reincarnated." Levi simplified it. "And who gets favoured depends on the pantheon you pray to."

That was contrary to what the church taught. Yet Olivia felt more inclined to believe those four before her, especially since they introduced her to two actual goddesses. One acted spoiled and the other worked hard and still relaxed. It made them more real? More approachable at least.

---

The caravan arrived late afternoon.

The mining town they arrived at was large and almost the size of a city. It had walls, gates, farms, and guards awaiting them.

The guards were professional and really confused when they saw four small girls with SSS Rank Adventurer Guild Cards. The cargo manifest did not align with the carriages present.

"They have stored it." The caravan leader pointed at the four overpowered girls. "It is an SSS Rank thing." He turned towards the four. "Can you show them the cargo?"

A carriage with a broken axle and piles of crates, barrels, and bags manifested.

"Uhm." "What the?" The two guards were not used to casual displays of power.

Yuki looked smug despite not doing anything.

"I think that looks correct now?"

"Why is there more security here despite this being a smaller settlement than the city?" Levi looked around. "I mean it is far more poisonous and unhealthy than the dungeon city."

"What do you mean poisonous?" A guard asked.

"The air and water are polluted," Levi replied.

"How do you know? You just arrived." A guard demanded.

Noire sniffed the air. "Yes, it is true, I can smell it in the blood. Your blood is actually infected. I guess the excavating, smelting, and refining all poisoned the water and crops around here."

Mya pulled a black book out. "Oh, most people here are scheduled to die within the next twenty to thirty years."

"Can you heal them?" Olivia asked the group.

"Naturally" "Easily" "Of course" "Yes" "Kon"

There was a moment of silence.

"Will you heal them?" Anne knew healers, they always wanted something for their work.

"No, they would just get poisoned again." Zaria's reply was uncaring.

"Unless their situation changes, like moving the smelters and refineries away, it won't help at all." Levi explained. "The soil and waters are poisoned all around this area."

"Even if we told them, they wouldn't believe it and it wouldn't change a thing," Noire explained. "I am pretty sure that the Alchemist guild should know."

"So want to stay here and spend the night, or want to go back to the dungeon city?" Levi asked.

"Does anyone remember the name of the dungeon city?" Zaria asked.

"Or of this one?" Noire actually didn't remember this one either. "I am sure it is written on the quest papers somewhere."

"Not like the names matter." Mya was not interested. "Cities, villages, kingdoms, empires and such come and go."

"Ghamish is the dungeon city." Anne reminded the girls.

"I have never been to a different place before." Ciel wanted to see it.

"Alright, I guess we will stay." Noire petted the girl on the head.

"Okay, let's explore a new place." Mya as a cat was always ready to explore.

Levi nodded. "But first, let's clean up the mess here."

"Cleansing and healing ritual?" Zaria offered. "That would allow us to use all our specialities in one go."

"Come, let us find a place to sleep." Mya decided it was time for a catnap.

"Kon kon."

"Yuki said we can sleep at the shrine again." Risa translated. "Isn't it Zaria's shrine?"

"Yes, but Yuki is a part of me, and I am part of Yuki," Zaria explained.

"Kon kon"

"What does controlling some of her instincts and intelligence mean?" Risa was confused. Yuki and Zaria were one, yet they were clearly separate. It made no sense to her.

"Don't worry about it." Noire told the girl. "We don't understand either."

"What are rituals like?" Ciel asked curiously.

"Ritual magic is when several casters or a single caster prepare a larger spell," Noire explained. "In our case, each of us could do this alone, but when we combine our magic it is easier since each of us thinks of different parts of the ritual."

"I have an easier time thinking of water and earth," Levi told the helpers.

Mya waved around. "I have the easiest time to think of all life. That means finding the people and plants."

"Purifying their blood and healing them is the easiest for me." Noire continued.

"I can do it all so I can coordinate it all," Zaria added. "Basically I am the ritual's core."

"Go in, I don't care any more." The guards were putting off thinking about it. SSS Ranks were far outside of their pay grade and responsibilities. What they were talking about made no sense either.

"Pack things up please." The caravan leader told the girls.

Everything faded away again. Then the group entered the town and went towards the warehouse that was used for item distribution.

There the group unloaded the cargo and got their quest slip signed. It could be turned in at the local smaller guild, or at the large one in the dungeon town.

"So, where do we sleep tonight?" Mya wanted to know.

Levi however had a higher priority. "Let's do the ritual first, I want our food to be clean."

Noire nodded. "Agreed."

They went to find an open space and there the four held their hands.

""""Circle of Life, Encircle Area, Cleanse, Clear, Heal, Purify, Purity, Nature, Remove Poison, Remove Unwanted Metals, Nature's Blessing, Enforce Health, Dry Mud, Bury, Encapsule, Crystalize.""""

The poisoned streams spat out sediments, those sank into the soil. Mud dried and the tailings dams emptied themselves of water. The poisonous waste sank into the ground, where deep underneath they crystalised. People and plants sweated and leaked disgusting fluids that stopped to the ground from where they followed the larger deposits underground and crystalised as well. Organs regenerated, bones reinforced themselves to healthy states, and tissues cleared themselves from deposits that corroded the bodies. Certain people would feel very differently as soon as brain damage was healed. There was also a baby boom in the future as sterilised people weren't any more. The air smelled fresh and clean now. Coincidentally the sewer system was cleaned as well, and everyone was healed from other ailments that were not purely age-related as well.

"There, all done." Noire was satisfied.

Mya shook her head. "At least until they poison themselves again."

Levi looked towards the streams in the area. "They are all clean for now. But most fish are dead."

Zaria shrugged. "People won't care, they will just do it over again." She waved at the town. "It is cheaper to dump it in a stream or behind a dam that will break or leak sooner or later. Making it all clean would make it far more expensive. It would need a lot of alchemists and mages. And those are expensive because they are rare."

"Is it that bad?" Ciel frowned at the group.

"No, it is simple to teach everyone. How long did it take you to learn how to make a small water ball?" Levi asked the girl.

"About three days?" Ciel guessed.

"For a proper education and professional training, it takes a few years. But a good alchemist can cleanly extract metals easily. But because they are rare, it is too expensive." Noire as a former queen was familiar with the issues.

The girls wandered off to find a kitchen to cook at. That meant that they managed to find a kitchen, in the small local orphanage. Children from the dead mine workers, adventurers, guards, and abandoned ones lived there.

For the four helpers, it was like home.

For the others, it was a slightly depressing sight that they easily shook off. They had seen far worse over the millennia.

The sister and kids stared in disbelief when Zaria unloaded piles of skewers.

"Kon" Yuki hid her eyes with her paws. This Tama made skewers a traumatic experience for the arctic vixen.

Watching over twenty kids look happy at the skewers was fascinating for the eight guests. The skewers were very welcome for the children. The eight however made something else to eat for themselves. This time it was pasta that they made. One was a bolognese, the next one carbonara, and finally noodles with cinnamon, sugar and butter. For drinks, there was tea and juice.

They were all working and eating together. For sleeping, they went to a proper inn.

The girls shared their beds again. It was still amusing for the helpers to see the four, or now five overpowered beings sleep in their animal forms. Yuki had her own pillow and was easily the largest of the animals.

They all happily slept.

The next day, they borrowed the orphanage kitchen again. They paid for the usage with skewers again. It was depressing how happy the kids were with the skewers. They were even happier with the shared milk, cereal, ham, eggs, piles of bacon, and more.

---

After eating, they explored the town. Which included going into the mines and showing the helpers how a normal mine worked. The mine was decently regulated even. The shafts were reinforced with magic, the airflow was actually regulated with a mixture of machines and technology.

Magic and alchemy made pickaxes and carts obsolete. That everyone here was working with normal tools showed that the mine was heavily invested in. Naturally the helpers doubted that pushing your hand into the rock and pulling a fully formed ingot out was normal.

"How did we get into the mine actually?" Anne asked. "I don't think that they normally allow people in?"

Noire waved a small silver bar around.

"Bribery?" Anne hoped she had the right word.

"That or the entry fee," Mya replied. "For the proper price, you can visit almost everywhere."

"Heaven?" Olivia wanted to know immediately.

"Sure, it is doable," Mya confirmed.

"Hell is more fun though. Heaven is so bright and boring." Noire complained.

Zaria shook her head. "Staying here is the best. Nice shrine, good food, great beds, and no reason to watch what you do. Actually where the angels live is the celestial realm and the demons live in the infernal realm. All the gods live in the divine realm and their planes."

Olivia nodded in understanding. The other three helpers were confused to various degrees, however.

Ciel was distracted by the way the rock walls solidified and hardened. Anne on the other hand tried the pickaxe on a wall that their guide indicated. She tried it with the strengthening and reinforcement magic that she had been taught. The heavy pickaxe felt light and she dug deep. Risa was poking a small shadow she had found behind a rock, the shadow was poking her finger in return.

"What are you doing?" Anne asked when she saw Risa giggle at nothing.

"I am poking this shadow?" The girl replied.

"What shadow?" Ciel asked as she looked over and saw nothing.

"Kon kon."

"For those who don't speak kon, she is poking a Darkness spirit," Mya explained.

"Aren't Darkness spirits evil?" Olivia asked for her fellow orphan.

"No, why should they be?" Noire asked, very confused.

"We were taught that darkness is evil," Ciel told them.

"I taught you a darkness spell, does that make you evil?" Noire questioned what they had learned.

"No?" Ciel doubted herself for a moment.

"Technically we could count as evil." Zaria pointed at them. "We don't care about laws, countries, religions, or mostly don't care."

"""Tama""" The other three clarified the 'mostly'.

"So fluffy~" Risa was currently remembering the many fluffy tails. Then she tried to get her finger back from the small darkness spirit that had wrapped itself around it.

"Hit the wall here." Levi told Anne.

Anne did that, and heard a weird sound with her pickaxe. "That sounded weird."

"You hit a magic crystal." Levi waved at her to continue.

"A magic crystal here?" Their guide perked up.

"It is pretty much the only one," Zaria informed the man. "There is another one down that way, and two more far further down."

Anne finally freed the crystal from the rock. "It's black?"

"It is a darkness crystal, it explains why Risa made a new friend."

The girl in question was poking at her shoulder, those able to see however saw the small spirit on her shoulder.

"Are the other crystals darkness crystals as well?" Their guide asked worriedly.

"Yes." Mya relied.

"Is the crystal dangerous or not?" Anne asked warily, staring at her find.

"It is perfectly safe as long as you are not doing anything stupid, fire crystals are far more likely to cause a mess," Levi explained. "I got tons of them lying around my lair."

"She really means tons, some are larger than houses." Noire rubbed her temples. "Remember to clean them up from time to time, or at least before you invite us over again."

"I think I still have those stashed away," Zaria remembered.

Noire peered into a shadowy portal. "Actually I still have them too."

Mya checked as well and frowned. "I have them too, but I seem to have picked up a dead dragon I don't remember picking up."

"What colour?" Levi wondered.

"It is white," Mya informed them.

Zaria perked up, her ears and tail standing at attention. "Dragon steak!"

"Great idea." "Lunch time soon." "if we marinade it today we can eat it in a week."

"That long?" Ciel asked curiously.

"Dragon meat is tough and highly magical. So you need to prepare properly." Zaria explained. "After preparing the steaks you need to beat them and marinade them properly for at least a week, a year is far better, and it doesn't matter if you forget them for a year or ten."

"Kon kon?"

Zaria stuck her head into a ripple in reality. "You were right I actually have dragon steak stashed away." She pulled her head and box out of the ripple.

"That's old." Noire peered at the box. "I'd say a few centuries."

Mya and Levi licked their lips with a greedy look at the box.

"Old meat makes my stomach hurt." Olivia moved away from the box.

"This one is fine, the steaks will need to be cooked till the evening anyway." Zaria checked the meat in the box.

Levi faced the four helpers. "Have you ever dismantled a dragon?"

"No" "Never" "Impossible" "No"

"Let's teach you after we leave." Mya bounced happily.

"They will need proper knives and daggers." Noire looked towards Zaria. "Do you have any spares?"

"Probably. If not, I can quickly make some." Zaria pushed the box back into the ripple and pulled two different ingots out of the ripple. She threw it to Levi. "Here, knead them until they are properly mixed."

Levi caught them and squeezed them together, then she started literally kneading them like dough. She completely ignored the strained metal noises and the way the metals started glowing and radiating heat.

Anne took her darkness crystal after carefully poking it a few times.

The group left the mine. It was interesting for all of them. The helpers had seen a real mine. The other four had once again seen how much the world had forgotten compared to some of the more memorable civilisations that were wiped out or wiped themselves out.