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As Avan unlocked the door with his mana, Elisa already stormed past him and ran with clattering steps into the small stone library, heading straight for the few books still placed on the stone table in the center. Behind him, he heard a giggle from Yue and glanced at her over his right shoulder. Her eyes were shining with excitement as well, peering into the room, but she was doing her best to appear controlled. Only her fox tail, wagging around as it often did, betrayed her once again, and her fluffy little ears on her fiery head also fidgeted with anticipation.

He looked at her over his shoulder and waved his right hand forward gesturing for her to enter as well. With a smirk on Avan's face and an apologetic look at him, she quickly walked past him and joined the young researcher, who was already eagerly leafing through the books.

Following a thought, Avan grabbed one of the books, earning a curious look from the two women as he marched towards the exit with the book under his arm, looking extra hard up, and left and right.

"Bookworm! Surely it's all right if I take the book with me, isn't it?" He asked loudly into the room as he stopped just short of the open door, laughing inwardly as an indignant gasp ran through the stone bookshelves.

With an audible plop and a theatrical smoky mist, the bookworm and mustache emerged at the far end of the room, to the left of the door into the adjoining bedroom.

Amused and waving the book in his hand in the direction of the book creature, Avan marched back to the table and placed the book on the table under the bookworm's evil looking gaze.

Addressing the two women, he winked at the fox girl with a grin. "I'll leave you to it then, and set off to complete the task for which I came to the dungeon." He looked at Yue and then Elisa. "I have a feeling that he might like you better than me and that nothing should happen to you here. Provisions and drink you have taken with you for a few days." He said still smiling and pointing with his left hand to the backpack, which was at Yue's side on the floor next to the table.

Under the gaze of a visibly confused looking bookworm, Avan said goodbye to the two women and hugged them once more, while listening to different statements from them both that he should take care of himself.

They had already talked at breakfast about how the two of them were going to get out of the room without Celestial Mana when the door closed behind them.

Elisa had a way with a runic crystal that could store a person's mana. Waving a golden, almost translucent crystal in his direction, she bid him farewell at the Fox Girl's side as he left the room for the dungeon with one last stern look at the Bookworm.

Aven smirked as he passed through the gate to the first level, hoping that the Guildmaster's granddaughter and the Book Creature would get along well.

He crossed the first level with the forest and from a distance here and there he could even spot a few wolfhounds. A short time later he already arrived at the second level with the kobolds also respawned by the dungeon. Seemingly tidy and everything looked like his very first visit.

Few Kobold patrols, which he encountered from afar, made a wide berth around him. Avan himself, who didn't feel like fighting his way through the Kobolds camp again, circled around it with some distance through the forest on the left side and some time later he arrived at the stairs to the trap levels.

Except that all the traps and mechanisms had repaired themselves again, or rather the dungeon had reset them. He marched through the corridors here as before, deactivating everything within his aura and sphere of influence.

With a sigh, he finally stood again at the foot of the wide but flat meadow hill and saw in the distance the stone house and well that had served as his home for a short time.

A white flash passed over the meadows, approaching him at a faster speed than he himself could have run. Horny, his still amusingly named hare and companion, galloped toward him half-jumping and half-running.

The hare landed with a final leap right in his face, while the horn fortunately jutted upward over Avan's head. Almost losing his balance, he laughed at his dungeon creature's antics and grabbed the hare, now a good half meter in diameter, with both hands and hugged it to his chest in greeting.

"Yes, yes, yes! I missed you too, my little fluffy friend." He called out to him as he scurried over Horny's head, while the rabbit rubbed his black leather armor and chest in obvious delight. Glancing up at his face, the oversized rabbit looked up, and Avan was almost certain he was looking at him reproachfully, asking him what had taken him so long.

Laughing and petting his companion on the arm, he walked across the trail toward the stone house.

"What on earth have you been doing here?" He asked the white, fluffy ball of fur in his arms. "You've definitely grown quite a bit since the last time I saw you. Almost got a little fat, huh? The dungeon environment here seems to be treating you well!" He continued as he looked at the unchanged meadow and surroundings, and alternately tickled Horny behind his little ears.

"How awesome it would be if you could actually not only understand me, but talk to me. And a fun thought; I wonder what topics you would talk about like that?" Thought so aloud to himself on the way to the fountain. "How lush the grass was today? Or, no, what I was just thinking about, letting you rot here for days." Grinned Avan as he mentally imagined a conversation between his dungeon creature and himself in his head.

Without him realizing it, with his eyes forward, it almost looked like Horny was giving him a bit of an evil stare.

Arriving at the cottage, Avan set his pack and Horny down on the grassy front lawn between the fountain and the house. Remembering to have promised Luria the Alchemist to bring new herbs, he set right to restocking his supply.

On the one hand, I love this tea, and on the other hand, these herbs probably bring me a lot of money. And having a supply of medicinal herbs with me, even if I can heal myself, shouldn't hurt in case of emergency ...

With his fluffy colleague at his side, he spent the next two hours gathering a supply of Lymia herbs.

Satisfied with his haul, Avan went back to the stone hut to make three cups of tea to take home with the three remaining stone cups and the freshly picked Lymia herbs.

At the end, as he shouldered his backpack, with Horny at his side, he looked again at his character interface and his inventory below.

 

Celestial Storage

[Bronze Coin]: 10

[Silver Coin]: 67

[Gold Coin]: 35

10 [Golden Meaples]

1 [well-used Spear]

3 [Water Flask]

1 [short sword]

3 [blanket]

1 [Tent]

1 [short ax]

1 [Used Iron Knife]

1 [Bow]

3 [wooden iron-tipped arrow]

79 stacks of [Berries]

11 dry [Roots]

122 [Lymia Herbs]

3 [Cup of steaming Lymia Tea]

113 [Hound Fangs]

9 [small Stones]

3 [Wooden Logs]

11 [Wooden sticks]

 

Satisfied with his haul and the yield from gathering the herbs, he circled the house to head in the direction of the huge stone gate at the end of the cave, loosely thirty meters high and ten meters wide.

The gate towered gigantically, the closer one came, to the cave ceiling, which was still littered as usual with glowing and glittering crystals as a canopy of heaven.

The archway contained a golden glowing ten centimeter wide line with speckled black stones in it, which ran around the entire archway. The huge door itself, also had the same line around the edge, from which lines ran root-like to the middle of a one-meter round circle, in the center of which rested a three-dimensional looking sphere that looked incredibly familiar to Avan.

All over the door, connected with small golden lines, were runes of all kinds, which also seemed to float in a circle around the sphere in the center.

The entire door was made of a white marble, which he already knew from the temple ruins on the surface, and with the golden decorations seemed to be made for kings and queens.

On the ground in front of the great gate, when he was only a stone's throw away from the entrance, he saw a semicircular area that ended exactly at the foot of the gate.

On top of what looked like a dome, the same supernatural-looking sphere that embodied the Dungeons of Akkalon was perched at the top in his direction.

Avan stepped closer to the large door, paying no attention to the relatively unadorned art on the floor in contrast to the door, and traced the fine granules and filigree indentations with his fingers.

As he touched the glowing golden surface beneath his fingers, he felt the familiar tingling that ran through his fingertips and was a sign of active magic.

He sat down on the marble floor, also white in color, and looked up at the gigantic door with his palms behind him on the ground.

Before I try anything, maybe I should take the runes for Balgur... But how do I write them down, so completely without note and pen? I idiot have completely forgotten that...

Thoughtfully he stared at the runes and rummaged mentally through his inventory.

I COULD take a knife or sharp object and scribble the runes into the stones.... Yep, that's what I'll do!

With that flash of thought, he sprang up, patted his hands on his breeches, and pulled out a stone from his celestial storage.

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