In a valley filled with humanoid creatures, a dome of the creatures could be seen. It looked as if they were trying to get to something, but they had no way of reaching that said thing.

 

LisiA and Aumo had managed to get around halfway to the end of the valley, but cracks were starting to form on the barrier. LisiA was trying to keep up the barrier by instantly repairing the damage done to it, but she was running out of mana. The absorption rate at which her body absorbed the expended mana was nowhere close to the rate that she was expending the mana.

 

“Aumo, I don’t think I can hold on any longer,” said LisiA as she looked at the cracks forming on the barrier. The humanoid creatures were all over on the barrier, except for the part that almost touched the stream next to them. Nothing could be seen because of the blockade, but the stream was enough for them to know which direction to go. Of course, they had no idea how far they’d gone.

 

Even though LisiA was running out of energy, androids don’t exactly show any signs of it. If not for the cracks on the barriers and LisiA herself saying that she is running out of mana, nobody would have any way of knowing that she is low on mana.

 

“How far are we in?” asked Aumo, “Will we make it in time before the barrier collapses?”

 

“You two are about halfway there. You have no chance if you continue to depend on this barrier,” Ria didn’t sugarcoat anything, and was completely straightforward with her answer.

 

“Is there any alternative?” asked Aumo.

 

“Yes there is. In fact, there are many that I have just computed. Some are dangerous, some are somewhat safe. Which ones do you want to try?” replied Ria.

 

A dangerous method to get out of this situation just didn’t seem very appealing, since they were already in a lot of danger at this given moment. Since there were safer options, Aumo immediately asked for the safer options.

 

“Lets see here, you can force more mana into LisiA’s body, which will keep this barrier on for the remainder of this trip. You may damage her circuits, but those can be easily repaired. The only issue is that this method is slow,” Ria gave out a recommendation, “The other recommendation is to brute force through this crowd and charge through. This method similarly requires you to take out LisiA’s core and store her body. It’s easier with one person. We are unsure of the effects of storing an android core in the mana storage, so do not store it until we are sure that it won’t alter the core in any way.”

 

“Do it the second way, please,” said LisiA, “This barrier is very tiring.”

 

“Alright then,” said Aumo. Of course, she didn’t expect LisiA to reply like that, since LisiA has never said that she was tired. This was the first time after so many years of her being with Aumo, so Aumo decided that she ought to give LisiA a break for once.

 

Back when LisiA assisted Aumo in building robots, LisiA had been taking care of daily chores, cooking, earning money, and what-not. She had never said or showed any signs of being tired, and her body didn’t show any signs of being overused either. The most damage LisiA had ever received was getting crushed under the rubble, and even then, she was not even that damaged.

 

Hearing Aumo voice her agreement, LisiA gave one last burst of mana to repair all the cracks, and then opened up her core compartment. Hers was located near her abdomen, and so she lifted up her blouse slightly to expose it.

 

LisiA gave Aumo a quick nod as a go-ahead, and Aumo took out the core. LisiA’s body didn’t go limp, but instead stayed perfectly in the pose that she was in before the core was removed. Aumo could feel that LisiA’s core was nearly emptied of mana, and felt a bit worried. Aumo then stored the entirety of LisiA’s body into her Mana Storage, but the sheet of metal that was connected to LisiA’s body didn’t get stored. As LisiA’s body disappeared, the sheet of metal was left and fell onto the floor with a klang.

 

Aumo went to pick up the metal sheet when suddenly, all of the humanoid creatures on the barrier all got sent flying off.

 

In the sky, huge words could be seen: “BUG DETECTED. SENDING OUT DEBUGGER.”

 

“There it is. The debugger. It didn’t go off for some reason when there were endless amounts of enemies, so we had to introduce another error into the system and hope that it triggers,” explained Ria, “If a ‘player’ suddenly ‘disappears,’ it would most definitely get triggered. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you. It’ll clear up the excessive enemies first before worrying about the missing player, so quickly run to the end!”

 

Upon hearing Ria’s instructions, Aumo immediately strengthened her legs and started charging towards the end with the sheet of metal and LisiA’s core in her hands. LisiA’s core was decently small, so she held it in one hand while holding the metal sheet in the other.

 

Around her, Aumo saw the humanoid creatures getting flung with great force away from the stream, and some went so high to never be seen again. Of course, there were ones that were untouched along the way, but they too were sent flying by Aumo’s strengthened kick as she ran through them. She had no time to deal with these things, and had to reach the end as soon as possible. They also gave no XP.

 

As the end got into view, Aumo saw that there were no longer humanoid creatures getting flung about anymore. She turned around and saw a giant mechanical arm quickly approaching her, making a sound that was somewhat inaudible at this range.

 

As it got closer and closer, Aumo started hearing what the mechanical arm was saying, “STATUS PLATE OF PLAYER FOUND. PURSUING. STATUS PLATE OF PLAYER FOUND. PURSUING.”

 

It repeated it over and over again, and just as it was about to reach Aumo, Aumo dove through an open doorway that looked extremely out-of-place at the end of the valley. Upon entering, the mechanical arm that was chasing Aumo immediately switched what it was saying.

 

“Status plate: Lost. Bug deemed gone. Terminating Debugger.”

 

Aumo slowly sat up and gave out a sigh of relief. The weirdest part about the sigh was that no air came out from her mouth, only the sound. Androids don’t require air to make sounds, the device in their body that makes sounds just uses mana to vibrate. The only reason that their mouths move along with the word they say is due to a very complicated technology, but it wasn’t always this way.

 

Anyway, Aumo checked if the sheet of metal or LisiA’s core were damaged during the dive, and was relieved to see that neither of them were damaged. The mana in LisiA’s core was also looking a bit better, which was also a nice thing to see.

 

Then, Aumo immediately complained, “How is that considered safe! I almost got caught there!”

 

“You had a 90% chance of being unscathed. That was my basis of how safe it was,” replied Ria, “Since you didn’t get injured along the way, it’s safe-certified.”

 

“Don’t just look at the chance of injury,” complained Aumo, “Think about the mental damage it could do to someone from the trauma too!”

 

“Trauma? What’s that?” Ria feigned ignorance.

 

Seeing how there was no point in arguing with Ria, Aumo stopped complaining and instead moved onto the next thing that she had to do. She took out LisiA’s body from her storage, and it reappeared in front of her in the same exact posture it had before it was stored.

 

“Does mana storage seriously note down the way it was positioned during storage?” asked Aumo, amazed by how there was actually no change in posture at all, not even by a single fraction of a degree off in the bend of the joints.

 

The residual mana in the body then ran out and it fell forward.

 

Aumo panicked for a moment, before quickly recovering since such a fall had no way of damaging the body in any way.

 

Aumo quickly flipped the body over, and tried to install the sheet of metal back into the core chamber.

 

“Let me help you with that,” said Ria as she saw what Aumo was doing. The Sheet of Metal was quickly put back into the place that it was, and then Aumo slowly inserted LisiA’s core back into the body.

 

The first thing that happened was....

 

“OUCH, I feel like I just face planted onto the floor!” LisiA immediately yelped out in pain.

 

There wasn’t enough mana left in the body to keep the posture, but the sensors were very-much still on. Since there was also less protection due to the lack of mana, the pain felt exactly as a person would feel if they fell face-first into the floor.

 

LisiA quickly deactivated her own pain-sensors for the time-being and looked around.

 

“We reached the end of the valley, it seems, what do we do next?” LisiA asked.

 

“Don’t tell me that we need to add another genre or whatever. Where are we?” asked Aumo.

 

“No worries, you have completed the dungeon. Just try to find a door,” replied Ria.

 

They could still see the stream that they had followed to get here, along with the hills and mountains, but there was a barrier blocking them from going back. The two then started looking for the door.

 

Status:

 

-----------------------------

Name: Aumo

Core Level:8

XP: 171/300

Status: Normal

HP: 2162/2200

MP: 953/1200 

MP Stored: 0

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Skills: Mana Manipulation, Mana Sight, Mana Sense, Mana Analysis, Mana Item Storage, Levitation, Mana Vibration, Small Fireball, Ice Throw, Air Slash, Body Reinforcement, Body Strengthening

 

Upgrades: Map, Gate Detector

 

Stored: Heater, Giant Breadstick

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