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"Ahm, yes. Now that's settled..." Avan scratched the back of his head one more time and then noticed his now frequent habit of this, which is why he dropped his arm again. "HOW do we get out of here, Horn?" He asked the now serious question to his new, human-like companion.

He gave Avan a skeptical look with raised eyebrows, and just pointed stoically behind Avan.

As if this gesture and directional indication had triggered something in Avan, he immediately became aware of it through his dungeon sense and audibly clapped his hands against his forehead. "Sure, of course he left a portal for us..." he muttered to himself as he turned one hundred and eighty degrees and looked into a golden yellow portal thirty meters away on the left side of the temple hall.

The new range of my dungeon senses is just too great... No wonder I didn't notice it right away among all the news. This is going to take a lot of training. Avan sighed and ran his palm over his forehead and hair in anticipation of the tasks ahead.

But satisfied with having a way out of the dungeon, Avan sat back down at the table where his tea was still steaming and gestured to Horn to sit down as well, while Horn watched him almost blankly.

Instead of sitting down, however, his companion stood to the left of the table with his pawed hands clasped behind his back, since it was apparently a cross between hands and paws, and looked patiently at Avan.

Sighing, Avan took a sip of the incredible tasting tea, which still seemed pleasantly warm, and finally identified the tea when he remembered the possibility.

 

[??? Tea]

 

Almost spitting out the tea, Avan just swallowed the liquid in his mouth and snorted loudly, a strange-looking Horn standing beside him. "Ahahahaha, I should have known!"

Without knowing about the ingredients themselves, of course I don't know what kind of tea this is!

Shrugging his shoulders apologetically, he turned to his dungeon companion. "Sorry Horn, but I had to laugh when the tea actually just identified itself as tea. I forgot that I can only identify what I know about." He explained to the rabbit-kin with a grin, which brought a mischievous glint in his opposite's eyes and a smiling nod.

"Yes, sir. The system knows and knows only as much as you yourselves know. Or at least your subconscious. Since no one here knows the origin of the tea leaves, except probably the creator himself, even our system can't do anything with it except spit out the obvious part." Horn explained with a slight bow of his head and confirmed Avan's statement with a slight grin, before he immediately became serious again.

Avan took another sip of the unknown tea and tugged thoughtfully at his chin. "Say, Horn, why so formal anyway?" And looked directly into the eyes of the person addressed with a tilted questioning head.

"Well, sir, it's simple." Horn finished his explanation with a perfectly executed gesture of his right arm, as the medieval butlers in the films on earth had always done. "I... have had a certain knowledge at my disposal in my evolution, and while for you certainly only a few seconds have passed, for me it has been hours. Hours in which I was free to shape my outer and inner self and decide who I wanted to be for my dungeon and master. So I decided on this vague feeling of a servant. If I interpret it correctly, a kind of house servant, or butler? I can't say more about it because it all seems vague to me as well. But a servant in any case. Someone who takes the work off your hands, takes care of the organization and runs your household, or in this case, your dungeon. If you're okay with that?" He asked the question at the end and looked at his master expectantly, his hands clasped again on his lower back.

Avan flinched briefly at the idea that someone seemed to have knowledge of his memories. But as he watched his faithful and waiting companion, he quickly came to the conclusion that he didn't mind as much as he perhaps should. And it seems to be just the concept of the butler... he nodded slowly up and down, while he looked through Horn with a stare.

He pulled himself together, and his slow nod became a single ernergic nod. "Okay, yeah. I can see where this is going. And to be honest, I'm already screwed up on my own. Having a helping hand by my side, with the best interests of us both in mind, would be a tremendous help. But can we drop this master speech, please? This is... kind of wrong."

Horn nodded once, gratitude lighting up his human features. "I can do that, sir. However, I would prefer, especially in public, to continue to address you as sir. Would that be a suitable compromise?" His fluffy friend replied questioningly.

"I can still handle that." Avan smirked at him, and suddenly had another burning question. "Tell me, Horn, what race are you now?"

I actually haven't even asked Yue that yet, oh god...

Bowing his head slightly again, and serious again, Horn looked into the void for a moment, until a second later he looked at Avan again. "It seems my race is titled Harmu, if my status screen is showing me correctly."

Oh? He has his own status screen? Okay, sure. Makes sense. Still interesting.

"Okay, I didn't know that term before. Another question, now that I know that you also have your own character interface. Do you have a class? An element? Any abilities?"

Horn looked at him in surprise, and seemingly hastily called up his status again. Avan looked up in surprise as Horn blinked at him in surprise. "Ahm, yes... It almost seems like the creator helped a little more than he first revealed."

With a clearing of his throat, Horn read his entries aloud. "Great; information specialist. Element; Celestial. Active Abilities; Akkalon's Form - Mirrored Ability. Passive abilities; backstab, dematerialization, dungeon creature, grandmaster of languages." Gradually, the list became more and more halting, and even Horn seemed more than surprised when he stared wide-eyed at Avan at the end.

Contrary to Horn's expectations, Avan laughed out loud. I have a Butler Assassin as a dungeon companion. How more cliché could Akkalon make that?

After a few seconds of incredulous laughter, Avan waved his hand apologetically and took another calming sip of tea before explaining. "Soooo, Akkalon seems to have assigned you an assassin class! And not only that, but mirrored you my relatively newly developed ability called Akkalon's Form. At least, that's my strong assumption. And if the term mirrored means one thing, then it is probably dependent on my own. My assumption is now, for the time being, that your ability also improves when I improve mine. Whether it also works the other way around, so if you use the skill and level up, we still have to test. But this explanation would make the most sense now and was the first thing that came to my mind." Avan grinned happily at his butler assassin companion, rubbing his hands together.

An "Aha!" moment crossed Horn's entire face, and he also grinned mischievously and contentedly at his dungeon. "And from the narrative, Akkalon's form is perfect for me! I don't seem to have any mana of my own, but then can I use the dungeon's mana for creation? And all the forms and possibilities with that ability. Infinite!" He asked his question aloud, suddenly holding his hairy rabbit hand palm up in front of him. No sooner had he finished his thoughts aloud than a bluish mist gathered around the palm and condensed into his glowing ball of celestial energy. Holy shit. That's a lot faster than me! I wonder if it's because I'm limited, having to channel everything through my inner core? Avan remarked wide-eyed as a perfectly round sphere floated onto Horn's palm in less than twenty seconds and he looked at it proudly.

During the creation, Avan had sharpened his dungeon senses and noticed how the mana had flowed out of his entire zone to this one point, but the density and amount of mana around him had barely changed noticeably. How MUCH mana is in my dungeon sphere? For fuck's sake?

Avan stared in amazement at the perfectly shaped sphere of celestial energy above Horn's hands. "That's cheating! I have so much trouble always having to channel all that mana through my inner core, and you can just skip it! Hah!" He laughed, earning another satisfied grin from his companion. "WHEREAS! I wonder, if YOU can do that, then I should be able to do that too, right? Another thing I need to try and learn, apparently... It never ends."

Satisfied for the moment, Avan realized with a digressive thought that he didn't even know how long he had now spent in the depths of Akkalon's dungeon, and how things might be progressing with Yue and Elisa upstairs. Suddenly, with a tug in his chest, he realized how much he had missed them. Especially after the experiences in the death plane.

He stood up almost too abruptly and looked at Horn with determination. "Do you know what? Let's finally get back to the surface! What do you say, buddy?"

Horn answered with a short nod and smiled slightly at him. With a brief movement of his palm, as if he were shaking something off, the celestial sphere simply burst into thousands and thousands of particles and within a second dissolved into blue and then translucent particles altogether.

Avan just shook his head. So much to learn... And it seems to come so naturally to him. But I'm glad!

Following an intuition, Avan smiled conspiratorially at his companion and dropped the magical steaming tea along with the teacup into his celestial storage, which brought a triumphant grin to his face.

"Hah! A magically soothing endless tea to go, please!" Avan moaned out, earning an approving nod from Horn.

Avan, pleased to have thought of this and to have successfully stowed the tea, also ran his hands over Akkalon's tea and had it disappear into his inventory as well.

Grinning, and with Horn following directly behind him, Avan marched off toward the portal, thrusting his right hand upward in triumph. "Let's go! Let's get out of here, Horn!"

Together they marched without further incident over to the portal and with a last look into the breathtaking temple and the statue which was now missing a staff, Avan stepped over the threshold of the portal.

With a muffled hiss, as if he were underwater, he stepped out again on the other side on a grassy landscape, and looked around with interest.

He seemed to have landed directly back on the fifth level.

He turned to his companion, who had just stepped out of the portal, and watched, fascinated by his eyes and newly sharpened dungeon senses, as the portal hummed and disintegrated. The mana that had previously been tangible to him in the portal simply disappeared, as if it had been sucked into another dimension. Will I also be able to create portals someday? As a dungeon and so on? was the first question that crossed his mind.

Without making much fuss, they both then set off to tackle the flat uphill.

As they traveled through the levels, both were engrossed in their new skills, and Avan gave in to the gnawing in the back of his mind, taking another look at his specialization and what had come with it.

Specifically, the development of his dungeon influence caused him to halt in his stride briefly as he climbed another flight of stairs, and Horn gave him a sidelong glance.

[Bronze] Range is multiplied by 5. (50m)

You are now able to store various mundane materials and keep them physically stable inside your sphere of influence. You have unlocked an anchor point.

Fifty meter range, so one hundred meters in diameter. All clear so far. I can store mundane materials, probably catalog them thanks to the specialization, and create them freely from mana, and keep everything physically stable. Check. Will require some experimentation, but so far everything makes sense. But what about this weird anchor point? What exactly does it DO? There was no explanation. Avan pondered the description of his bronze rank in the dungeon zone of influence.

A typical anchor, when I think of boats and ships, holds something in place. Can I use it to anchor something? Can I use it to anchor my dungeon in place somehow? I don't see how. Hmm... Just as he was pondering the anchor more deeply, his dungeon companion gently grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Sir. I think we're a little too far along, don't you think?" Came the question from behind him, and Avan blinked away his thoughts as he found himself a few steps away from the dungeon's exit, right at the beginning of the long hallway with all the martial arts murals.

"Oh..." he muttered, scratching the top of his head. Avan turned and nodded at Horn. "Right, thanks. Didn't pay attention at all."

Let's see what they've been up to with the bookworm.

Before he could take another step, he noticed the hairy hand still resting on his shoulders and turned to Horn, whom he had just passed.

"I would suggest that I don't show myself, as it would raise too many questions, Very specifically with Elisa, who doesn't know anything about you as a dungeon yet." He suggested to Avan.

Avan clapped his hand in front of his forehead. Sure, damn it, I didn't even think about it. But Horn's presence already felt so normal...

"Oh yeah! Thanks, that would have really raised some questions that I'm not ready for after all this new information..." He thanked Horn with a sigh. "Hmm... How about testing out the ability that lets you dissolve in the dungeon?"

His faithful companion nodded seriously and suddenly had a concentrated expression on his face. Without warning and without much noise, Horn's form abruptly dissolved into small golden particles, which immediately faded away.

Avan looked around with interest and excitement, but he couldn't see Horn anywhere, and his dungeon sense couldn't detect anything within a fifty-meter radius.

"Test, test. Can you still hear me, sir?" A voice suddenly sounded in the back of Avan's head, causing him to jump spontaneously, and he looked around hastily, startled, until it dawned on him.

Is that you? he thought to himself, concentrating on answering the voice.

"Yes, it is. That seems to work. And interestingly enough, in this form I can perceive the entire dungeon in all its sphere of influence. Is that how it feels to you all the time, sir? It's... a little overwhelming at first, but I'm getting the hang of it. This should be quite a labor saver for you." Horn's voice murmured in the back of his head as all sorts of thoughts jumped through Avan's mind.

That's... more than just interesting. This could help me keep track of things and not get surprised all the time! Thanks for the information, Horn. I'll go check on the two ladies now. And by the way, you are now my personal dungeon fairy! He chuckled.

He squeezed through the narrow gap at the right side of the tunnel and stood a few seconds later in front of the familiar, rune-covered door to the former small library of the healer's order.

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