The machine began to glow red hot as whatever was happening inside it reached critical levels, at least according to the machine itself.

“Warning, quantum pressure is reaching maximum safety levels. Containment field generators are reaching critical temperature. Containment field failure is imminent” It said in a female emotionless robotic voice.

I took one more look inside the room, but couldn’t see anyone else inside, so I entered the room and took a look at the front of the machine.

It had a keyboard and four displays on the side showing an incredible amount of data that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. There was a window to the inside of the machine, but the only thing I could see was an explosion of rainbow lights that looked were in a blender as they danced around, it was almost mesmerizing and if it wasn’t by the constant warnings the machine was giving off and the metal glowing red already I would be totally mesmerized by it and look at it for hours on end.

“Well, I know that “containment failure” is something bad, but how bad is it?” I asked out loud, to my skill.

[Information not available]

The answer was, not surprisingly, unhelpful. What did surprise me, though, was that it wasn’t only my skill that answered me.

“Calculating… In the event of containment field failure and the current flux conversion rate, a quantum foam release with 4.8x108 peta-joules of energy will occur” The robotic voice of the machine answered my question, to my surprise.

“Wait, wait, wait. How much energy is that?” I asked, again to my skill and to see if the machine would answer again, and it did.

“4.8x108 peta-joules of energy” it said, not really helpful as I didn’t really have a good grasp of how much energy that was, only that it was a lot.

[A nuclear bomb can produce from 2.1 to 4.1x106 giga-joules of energy when activated]

"…THIS WILL EXPLODE WITH MORE ENERGY THAN A NUCLEAR BOMB? IS THAT GUY TRYING TO ERASE THE CITY, NO, ACTUALLY, IT SAID PETA-JOULES, THIS WILL ERASE AN ENTIRE CONTINENT FROM THE FACE OF THE PLANET" I screamed inside my mind. "AND I’M RIGHT BESIDE IT!"

I couldn't see my race, but I was sure I was making a horrified face as the machine right in front of me had the combined power of thousands of nuclear bombs fused together to one big doom device you see in comics.

"You don't have to worry" another voice echoed in the empty room.

I looked around, trying to find the owner of the voice, but the only other creature in the room was a butterfly that landed right on my snout. Its wings were dark and had the image of a pair of eyes that, if what I was feeling coming from those eyes was right, were identical to a dragon's eye, I could even feel a faint presence of a dragon, the same I felt when I was next to Staash and Kora.

"Even if it looks like all hope is lost, there is always a way" The voice said again.

"Are you… the butterfly?" I asked out loud as the voice seemed to come from the butterfly, but I wasn’t certain.

"Yes, and no. I once was a simple butterfly, but now I'm much more than that. You've already met one of my kind, though I guess you thought his avatar was himself" The butterfly said, but it seemed to notice my confusion as it explained itself. "I am the dungeon itself, the crystal in the middle of the room is the real me. This body you see before you is but a simple avatar"

"But enough explaining, even though I said there's no need to worry, if you don't cool that thing over there we both will have serious problems" it said, after explaining itself.

I looked at the machine again and could swear I saw a part of the metal bubble up, but maybe it was just my imagination. Without a second to waste, I casted [Ice Spear] and was about to shoot when I was interrupted by the butterfly.

"I said to cool it down, not open a hole in the side of that thing. I may have not understood a word you and that thing said to each other, but I can sense how much magical force is inside it and I know how bad it will be if it explode" it said in a calm and sweet voice that sounded more like a mother calming her child than a scolding as it is intended to be.

"But I don't-...!" I was saying but then I had an idea.

I could cast [Fireball], [Ice Spear] and the mixed spell I created [Fire Spear], but I never tried to change the fire aspect of [Fireball] with the cold one I've learned with [Ice Spear]. If it works, I would learn how to do a new spell and probably manage to cool this machine before it explodes and vaporizes this entire region from the face of the planet.

I used my still regenerating paw to draw the magic circuit in the air. It looked less bright than before, probably a sign it was healing. As I finished drawing the magic circle and pushed my magicules into it, the circuit collapsed on itself and in its place a sphere of blue flames appeared. I was confused for a moment when I noticed those flames weren't emitting any heat and, in fact, were consuming the heat in the air around it with such speed that the air itself was begging to liquefy and drip down in the ground. I haven't created an [Iceball] but rather an [Coldball], what's the difference? An [Iceball] would be a literal sphere of ice where an [Coldball] is a sphere of energy that consumes heat.

I then moved the sphere of blue flames to the machine in an angle the sphere totally engulfed the machine. The moment the metal touched the blue flames, it visibly began cooling down but at the same time the drain on my magicules to keep the spell going shot through the roof. I had less than half of my total magicules count and the drain of the spell caused it to drop even further.

I felt my mind getting tired, as if I was spending days awake with each second it passed, I felt I wouldn't be able to last long with this going.

"Draw another magic circuit" The butterfly said. "With the aura you and that thing threw around my dungeon I can't do much, but I can at least activate magic circuits if they already exist"

I nodded and while I kept infusing magicules on the sphere I had already cast, I drew another one, but instead of infusing it with magicules to actually cast it, I kept it in place. Soon I could feel another wave of magicules entering the magic circuit I had drawn, and before I lost my mental connection with the spell, something else happened.

The moment the information about a new skill entered my mind I cut the flow of magicules to my ongoing spell as there was already another [Coldball] in its place, one not controlled by me but by the dungeon itself.

"Containment field generator's temperature has dropped below the maximum safety threshold, field strength is increasing" The machine said.

“We did it. The containment field is getting stronger and it won’t explode and wipe us out of the face of the planet” As I said it, I could feel the worry draining from me.

“I didn’t understand a word you’ve just said” The butterfly said.

“Huh? What do you mean?” I asked. “Weren’t you speaking with me just now?”

“Yes, I was” It responded.

“Then why did you just say you didn’t understand what I’ve said, like right now. You answered me” I spoke.

“Yes, I answered you and yes, I’m talking with you right now, but… Let me ask you a question, for how long have you had two or more language skills?” It asked.

“Language skills? You mean the ones like [Humania Language]?” I questioned.

“Yes” The butterfly answered.

“Oh, not too long. I don’t know how long I was blacked out, but from my point of view… A couple hours?” I said honestly.

“I see. Let me inform you, as sometimes people don’t realize this for some reason. Whenever someone has multiple language skills, each language will sound, to the user that is, exactly the same. When they try to communicate with more than one person, each speaking with their own language, they will default to the last language they’ve heard and not realize it” It explained.

“You mean I was talking to the machine in another language than I’m currently speaking, even though both sound the same to me, and you didn’t understand anything?” I asked.

“Yes” The butterfly said.

“Then how come the first thing you said to me was that I don’t have to worry?” I questioned it.

“...Your face” It said.

“My face?” I asked, confused.

“If I had to describe your face when you and that thing were talking, I would describe as “The face a villager makes when an elder dragon pays his village a visit” is that explanation enough?” It said.

I sighed.

“...I can imagine what my face looked like when you put it that way” I said. I can clearly picture the face someone does when a ginormous dragon makes itself known… Hell, I don’t even need to imagine it, Jana made that exact face when we met Staash and Kora.

“Now, I need to think about what I’m going to do-...” The butterfly, or better, the dungeon’s avatar was saying before the machine interrupted it.

“Warning, boronita reserves have reached critical mass. The quantum flux reaction has achieved self-sustaining status and can no longer be controlled. Emergency stabilizers have been activated as any attempt to extract energy from within the chamber will lead to containment breach” The machine said.

“Oh no” I said.

“I don’t understand the words you’ve just used, but I can understand the emotion behind them and I agree. Oh no indeed” The avatar said, and even mimicked the words I just used.

“Do you understand what’s happening?” I asked.

“Not entirely, no. But I can sense that whatever mineral was triggering the magicule reaction inside the chamber reached some form of limit and now the quantity of magicules inside the chamber are exponentially increasing and… Oh no” It said.

“What?” I asked as my anxiety kept growing and growing.

“The magicules inside the chamber just skipped the solid state and went straight into liquid state” It explained.

“And… How bad is it?” I asked.

“Very. Whatever barrier this thing is using to keep the magicules at bay wasn’t projected to handle liquid magicule and… It has already started” It said.

“What!? What has already started!?” I shouted as I backed off from the machine, even though it wouldn’t do much, after all, with the amount of energy this thing exploding would generate a centimeter or a meter away wouldn’t do anything, but anxiety and fear aren’t really rational things.

“Can you draw a magic circuit for me?” The dungeon’s avatar spoke. “If you and I want to survive this, we need to at least divert the first wave of magicules. And, if you want to survive the aftermath, you must not think about anything. No time to explain, allow me to pass the magic circuit telepathically to you and use whatever you need to create it within 5 seconds”

The moment the avatar finished speaking, I felt a mental ping as if someone was trying to touch my mind. Immediately after the ping, my [Abnormal Mental Resistance] skill went to work to stop whatever that ping was from gaining access to part of my mind, but trusting the dungeon’s avatar I stopped my skill and that mental ping transformed into a mental message. Information about a super complex circuit was shoved inside my mind as I unconsciously activated [Though Acceleration] to keep up with the information being shoved inside my mind, but even though my mind was accelerated to more than twice the normal the information being passed to me was so much that when my mind sped up, the transfer rate also sped up.

After more than a minute of me feeling like I was watching a video about advanced mathematics on Youtube at 2x the speed, the information being shoved on my mind finished with a last “You have 2.03 seconds left, hurry”. I didn’t even have the chance to properly examine what that diagram was when I saw the machine beginning to warp and melt in some places, meaning that I was really running out of time to live if I didn’t draw whatever magic circuit I was given by the dungeon.

Splitting my focus in two, thanks to [Parallel Processing] I looked at the magic circuit inside my mind and moved my own magicules, that were already low enough to cause a headache, to draw it in front of me. After starting the drawing process, I noticed I wouldn’t have time to complete the entire thing if I just drew it one line at a time, so I split my focus even more and began drawing multiple lines at one. I didn’t know if it would work, as I only had done it with multiple spells at once and not one spell being drawn by more than once line of thought, but I was glad it worked.

The spell took form as a semi-sphere with multiple circular parts connected to each other by various geometrical figures and weird symbols. The only thing I recognized in the mess of lines and symbols were small sections that acted as a buffer for magicules and the part that gave the spell a shape, even though I didn’t know what shape it was going to give to the spell, and I only knew those two because I had [Knowledge Library] download information about the [Ice Spear] into my mind.

I had no time to look at the magical circuit I had created as the machine in front of me simply transformed into a rainbow liquid that happily expanded to every direction with such speed that I barely had the time to understand what was happening. In less than a fraction of a second, the machine had dissolved into magicules and the liquid magicules it was holding inside expanded outwards with tremendous speed that it covered the distance from the machine to us, around five meters, in a millionth of a second. The moment the rainbow wave hit the magical circuit, it powered the whole thing at once and two bubble shields appeared, one right around me and one around the dungeon core that was floating some distance away from me.

In less than a second, the whole room was covered in a rainbow liquid that was just as tall as my head as it looked volatile, not actually just looked, it was behaving like it was super volatile. In a moment the liquid was still, and the next waves of lightning formed around the room, the next moment flowers were blooming around the air and burning away to cinders.

“Do not think about anything” The dungeon’s avatar said, before its butterfly body began to break down into light. “There’s too much magical interference, I’m losing contact with my avatar and the ability to keep it stable. I’m sorry, but from now on you’re on your own” It said before disintegrating into light.

I looked around, and wherever I looked chaotic things were happening. To my left there was a giant ice crystal growing larger and larger, to my right there was a lava cascade falling from the ceiling and disappearing inside the rainbow liquid, right in front of me there was a metal blade spinning like a blender. I was inside the bubble that was keeping the rainbow liquid away, but I could tell it wasn’t going to hold much longer. With each moment, the bubble was being warped from its original shape, I could tell that whenever it happened a part of the bubble shield that wasn’t warped would replace the warped piece and discard it to the liquid and as it was being constantly warped, the bubble was becoming thinner and thinner.

The bubble lasted exactly ten seconds, which were extended to more than twenty minutes using [Though Acceleration]. I knew the dungeon’s avatar told me to not think about anything, but I needed to know what I was dealing with, so I used [Knowledge Library] to do exactly that.

[Liquid magicule is a state of magical energy where magicules with close to no mana become so dense that their close to non-existent mana fields merge together and form a mesh-like structure within all of the magicules. Any mental energy that reacts with the mesh-like mana structure from within the magicules will trigger a primal expression of magic]

So, basically, this rainbow liquid is magicule packed so much together they kinda become a single thing and is highly reactive to mental energy, that's why the dungeon’s avatar said to me to not think about anything. So all I had to do after the bubble shield failed was to not think about anything and I would be fine. So, with this knowledge in mind, I cleared my head and waited for the bubble shield to fail.

The moment the shield failed, all the liquid magicule around me came crashing down towards me, but not with the same force it had when it was freed from the inside of the machine, it was more like water as it came down on me. Thinking I would be perfectly fine as long as I didn’t had any thoughts, I stood still as the rainbow liquid washed over me, but that though soon became fear and pain as whatever part of my body that was in contact with the liquid felt like it was burning from the inside out