Serenity felt the chair try; he felt as it followed the ley line network as far as it could. He even vaguely felt it ask Asihanya’s World Core. Compared to the dungeon, the World Core was placid and unruffled. Unfortunately, while it was slow to answer, its answer matched the answer the dungeon had found.

Jenna wasn’t on Asihanya. While there were many ways she could have been hidden or simply missed by the search, Serenity hadn’t expected her to be on Asihanya in the first place. He’d hoped that the chair or the dungeon could do more, but it seemed like Asihanya’s ley line network was its limit.

When the search finished, Serenity opened his eyes and moved away from the chair. Unlike the others, especially Gabriel, he didn’t feel tired or distressed; he felt invigorated, almost fidgety. A moment’s thought gave him a likely cause for the difference: the chair, like the dungeon, used relatively raw natural energy from the ley lines, concentrated at the chair to achieve whatever effect was requested. As a dragon who could eat ley line energy, it didn’t bother Serenity at all; instead, it was more like an energy drink. The same didn’t apply to ordinary humans.

“You’re fine?” Gabriel stared at Serenity from about ten feet away. “As long as you were there, I was pretty sure you were going to be retching on the floor when you finished.”

Serenity shrugged. “Sometimes not being human is an advantage. Dragons are manavores, we’re built to handle higher mana concentrations.” It wasn’t like saying that gave anything away; they already knew of him as a half-dragon from his Guild card. Serenity was still a little irritated with Alain for sharing it, even if he really should have expected it.

“Want to share what you asked for?” Daryl phrased it as if it were a question, but his tone of voice made it a statement instead.

Serenity looked directly at Daryl. “My daughter’s not on Asihanya. Anything else you want to ask?” He was tired of Daryl’s attitude.

“Daughter?” Daryl looked like Serenity had just smacked him. “Your child is missing?”

Serenity took a deep breath, then let it back out. He supposed he probably hadn’t mentioned Jenna. “She’s being taken care of, or at least she’s supposed to be. Her caretaker messaged me a couple weeks ago and said he was headed to Asihanya with her but didn’t say why. He hasn’t sent anything since then, so I don’t know what to think. I’m worried, but I don’t know if there’s anything to be worried about.” Serenity paused and turned part of the way towards the chair instead of facing Daryl. “After Gabriel found your Guildmaster, I hoped the chair could tell me. Unfortunately it looks like it’s limited to Asihanya.”

Serenity didn’t regret using his request on checking for his daughter. He didn’t really need anything else that it could do; he could manage without its help. It was simply too bad that it hadn’t worked.

“I hope you find her,” Naomi said. It was clearly the sort of general sympathy you’d get for any sad story and not deep caring, but that didn’t bother Serenity; he really couldn’t expect more out of someone he’d only recently met.

Daryl and Gabriel hurried to agree.

Serenity glanced around the room. Somehow, he didn’t really want to stay here any longer. They’d all used the chair and Daryl had split up and delivered the Etherium. The only thing Serenity had left to do in the dungeon was free it, and he’d already settled on the fact that he was going to have to come back for that.

He’d let other people know he was talking to dungeons in the past, but the Silver Blades’ Guildmaster was the person he was trying to free the dungeon from; letting them know that he could talk to dungeons would be a great way to get someone they thought was Tier Ten angry with him. Serenity would prefer to avoid that.

“Let’s go home,” Gabriel said. “I’m going to spend the next few days healing then hopefully not being in pain.”

Everyone nodded. Daryl vanished, followed by Naomi and Gabriel. Serenity accepted the prompt to leave the dungeon, but he didn’t find himself outside the dungeon. Instead, he floated in an empty blackness that he knew was the dungeon’s core space.

“Can you free me?” The dungeon’s core appeared in front of Serenity when it spoke. It was an irregular, almost amorphous-looking blob; if anything, it looked more like amber than most crystals Serenity had seen. Serenity knew that odd shapes grew more common as dungeons grew larger …or was it older? Well, either way, this dungeon core was far less organized than the young ones on Earth.

Serenity sighed. “Maybe. I just have to figure out how.”

He floated over to the core and set his hand on it. That might or might not be required, but it felt right and that was usually a good start when you were trying to cast a spell you didn’t know. Serenity focused on the core, but couldn’t see the bonds he knew had to be there. Without a known spell and without being able to see the bindings, he couldn’t craft a spell to deal with it.

Not that he’d really expected a spell to work anyway. This was a Skill, and a specialized one; if it were as simple as a single spell, it wouldn’t be part of a specialized Path. Serenity had never heard of anyone who wasn’t specifically dungeon-focused getting a dungeon-related Path. More importantly, neither had Raz, and Raz had actually studied the subject.

That meant Serenity was going to have to try to use an Intent-based spell. That had the advantage of being fast, at least, but he didn’t know what else it would do. He didn’t even know if it would work.

Unless … didn’t he have a Skill that was related to binding dungeons somehow? Or something like that? He wasn’t actually sure he’d ever used it.

Serenity searched his Ability list until he found the half-forgotten Skill.

Link Core

While touching an Essence Core, you can attempt to create a Sovereign Link. Enhanced by Ambit.

Really, what was a dungeon core other than an Essence Core? Serenity was pretty sure they were the same thing. More importantly, if he could establish the link himself, somehow take it over from Guildmaster Zany, it should break the link to the Dungeon Binder. At that point, he’d control the link and probably be able to break it himself.

There were a lot of “should”s there, but it seemed a lot more likely to work than an Intent-based spell.

Serenity wasn’t certain how to do this, but the only way to find out was to try. He tugged on the Skill. It didn’t do anything, but he suddenly had an idea. It wasn’t possible to tell if it was his own idea or information from the Skill; Skills could be weird like that. The “coincidence” of getting the idea as he tried to use the Skill made him think it was probably a hint from the Skill.

Serenity concentrated and found a strand of Essence, rather than mana. He was glad he’d practiced with it; he wanted a thin strand. Something that would be easy to break later. He fed the Essence into the dungeon core.

It pulled on something he hadn’t recognized before, a pool of power that had the feeling of Potential rather than mana or essence. It was related and seemed to be coming from the same place yet was more primal than either. It seemed to be composed of both mana and essence. Was that where his mana and essence came from? Was that why he had issues with an imbalance as well as one or the other being too low?

Serenity let the Potential spool out of himself along the line of essence and into the dungeon core. It felt slow but it was also thick, heavy with power. It suffused the dungeon core over the course of about a minute.

Serenity expected something to happen when his power finished spreading through the Dungeon Core. It did, but it wasn’t exactly what he expected. Instead of a new awareness of the dungeon core or feeling the old link snap, he felt something resisting him. It felt more like being on fire than anything else; indeed, it felt more like being on fire than actually being on fire would, with his Heat Resistance.

Serenity growled and pushed against it. He concentrated on freeing the dungeon core as he sent even more Potential over the link. This time, there was a strange feeling to the Potential. It sparked and it shone, proclaiming itself in the same way that “holy” mana did.

Surprise made Serenity almost lose the link. He’d never really expected to use his own “holy” magic, even after his Dungeon Deity evolution and Path. He’d known that it would probably happen, yet at the same time it hadn’t seemed real until he saw it here.

It was somehow reassuring that what he had was holy Potential instead of holy mana. Serenity wasn’t sure why that was reassuring; it meant that he knew less about it. On the other hand, it also meant that he was less like the gods who targeted Vengeance simply because he was undead. It wasn’t like Vengeance had a choice about that!

Serenity felt the link waver again. It hadn’t really stabilized after his initial surprise and now it was just about to let go. He turned his attention back to what he was supposed to be doing. This was like Intent-based casting; he had to keep his mind on the task or anything could happen. Whatever happened because of loss of focus wouldn’t be what he wanted.

He wanted the dungeon core freed of the tie binding it to Guildmaster Zany. He would accept a link to himself, but it would be better if there wasn’t one. That was a hard thing to keep in mind when he had to maintain some sort of link to keep the magic moving.

Still, while Intent-based casting wasn’t his preference, Serenity did know how to do it. He concentrated on the idea of a free dungeon core, one not constrained by others’ limits on its behavior but only by its own ethics and choices. He let the mechanical nature of actually handling the magic fade into the background, handled by reflex and practice. He could allow himself to concentrate on it when he needed to focus on breaking Guildmaster Zany’s link.

Everything seemed to stutter for a moment. There was a high-pitched noise, or perhaps just the feeling that there should be a noise, as magic filled the dungeon’s core space like a flood of bright light. The light dimmed quickly, but it still felt like there were magical afterimages on Serenity’s brain.

That had to be the link breaking.

Serenity backed off on the magic he pushed through the core and tried to drop his own link. He backed away then felt to see if he’d left anything behind.

He didn’t think he had, but he could still feel something from the core. It was almost like something was flowing from the core to him along a link that he couldn’t control; he could barely even sense it. Serenity concentrated on it and found that could see a tiny amount of the same sparkling Potential flowing from the dungeon that he’d poured into the dungeon to finally break the link.

Did that mean he’d just gained a new worshiper or was it simply excess coming back to him somehow? Serenity wasn’t certain, but either way it was the dungeon’s choice rather than his. That was all he’d tried for.

Lillene

Ah, the joy of learning something new that seems like it should work like something old and doesn't exactly...