Theo held the communication crystal in his hand, focusing his intent on contacting Elrin. He felt the same mental haptic buzz as he had so many times before; the other end was ringing. While it took the man a few minutes to answer, eventually his voice flooded into Theo''s mind.

    "How does this thing work?" Elrin asked. "Do I just say what I want to say?"

    "You could also think it," Theo said. "If you don''t mind, I have a few questions to ask you."

    “Actually, I''m kind of busy.”

    “This will only take a second. Actually, did you do anything to activate a shard on this plane? Maybe empower it or turn it on? I''ve got some void energy near my town, and it''s being siphoned to the west.”

    “Yes, that was me. Can I go now?”

    "Normally we have some kind of sign-off..." Theo trailed off as the connection between him and Elrin was cut. “You know, that guy is kinda rude.”

    "Did he cut the connection?" Xol’sa asked. "Were you able to get any information out of him?"

    “It looks like he is both aware of the siphoning effects of the shards and the one responsible for activating them.”

    “That''s a good thing, right? I didn''t know that the shards could do that, but this works in our favor.”

    Theo should have seen more things like this coming. Elrin had said that he had a connection with the shards. He claimed to be the guardian of the shards, actually. While it was still impossible to tell his exact motives, it seemed safe to say that he wasn''t working in a malicious capacity. If anything, he was working in a way aligned with the interests of the system. While the system didn''t always have its denizens in mind, in this case, it should work out for the benefit of everybody.

    Xol’sa had some more things to go over. Just as Theo was attempting to adjourn the meeting. He brought up the topic of the dungeons. As much as the alchemist wanted to groan and complain about the report, this was extremely important.

    "I''ve started experimentation on the affected dungeon," Xol’sa explained. “What I have observed paints it as a system-based error. So far, only one dungeon has reached the negatives, and it hasn''t gone below one. And I don''t think it will go below negative one.”

    "Any progress on destroying the dungeons?" Theo asked.

    “If we''re interested in destroying the dungeon, we should do it sooner rather than later. The issue is that to destroy the dungeon, we need to proceed to the core, where I need to cast a ritual spell. I''ve never done it, and it''s supposed to be incredibly dangerous.”

    Which presented a massive problem if they wanted to destroy the negative dungeon. Getting to the end of it, which is where the core should have been, would be difficult, if not impossible. Then, they couldn''t be assured that their methods for destruction would even work. Since most of the contents of the dungeon were acting strangely, it was likely that the core would act strangely. Yet, the prospect of dealing with so many negative dungeons in their immediate vicinity wasn''t appealing.

    “Let''s get a meeting going with the local leadership. I want you to bring this to everyone''s attention. Do you have any recommendations for moving forward?”

    "We should destroy them all,” Xol’sa said plainly. “Imagine a gaggle of negative dungeons around town. The danger to our people would be incalculable.”

    "Get the meeting going," Theo said. "Make sure everybody understands it''s urgent."

    The mountains to the north blocked most of the view of the road and train track, but Theo got a decent view of the area. He could see some of the market and harbor area through a shroud of mist. Ships were sailing up the magical canal to the harbor, while others were out in the bay, anchored, as there was only limited capacity within the harbor. There was still no sign of the lizard folk from this outpost attacking. If they had taken offense to Tresk stealing their stuff, they hadn''t shown it. Not only had they not sent warships, but they had also not sent an emissary.

    Theo picked the ponderous path down the hillside. He wandered around down towards the market as he checked on Tresk’s progress with the dungeons. She had been scouting the mine at first, but shifted her attention to the various dungeons after that bore no fruit. The mine was safe for now, and that was a good thing, but the dungeons seemed less certain. Although none of the others had dipped below level 1, that didn''t mean they couldn''t do so at any moment.

    Even now, Aarok was organizing teams to go into the dungeons with Xol’sa. They planned on destroying the dungeons. It wasn’t an ideal outcome, but it was better than being left with a handful of negative dungeons to deal with. If only his future sight could stretch further than seconds, he could figure out which dungeon would fall next. More than likely it was the Ocean Dungeon then the Mountain Dungeon. He checked his interface once again before entering the market, confirming that each dungeon was still dormant.

    As expected, Alise bought most of the meat that was imported from other lands. The only things remaining were monster cores, seed cores, items, and other junk. All those provisions were tossed into dimensional storage in the town hall or added to the town storage itself. Mingling among the people, they are buying things for their daily lives. May Theo feel better. As he was waiting for several things to come together on their own, he was slightly aimless. At least there was an update in his administration interface about Xol’sa’s beacons and tethers. They were only waiting for several magical devices to finish absorbing some kind of mana, then they could finally test them.

    Theo expected there to be a testing period without much success. But that’s how he worked best. After growing bored at the market, checking on the rail, and inspecting the boats moored in the harbor, he made his way back into town. Tresk’s reports continued to roll in as he settled into the lab with Salire. The last run of soul and mind potions were just about done, only needing to be brewed. Tomorrow would be a new day for the lab. They could resume normal operations, content with the knowledge that they had enough potions for every single elf.

    “I was thinking of going through the different properties we haven’t had much time to test,” Salire said, presenting a range of reagents she had placed on a table. “I don’t expect them to have much useful, but it wouldn’t hurt to do a decent test of the fermentation system.”

    Theo nodded, allowing his mind to wander. They weren’t just creating potions out of habit. There was something else on his mind. “We’re making some decent potions,” he said, trying not to change the subject. He thought his nod was enough to let her know he was down to make some potions. “We can continue to do so. And I’m wondering if we’ll really need some good ones before the end.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Well, I have a feeling about our weird dungeons,” Theo started, allowing his thoughts to collect, “If stuff gets nasty with those dungeons, we’re going to need every potion we can get.”

    “Oh. You think it’ll be that bad?”

    Theo opened his administration interface. Xol’sa and his team had only set off an hour ago, so they wouldn’t have a report. But when that report came in, he expected them to have failed. It wasn’t as though he had no faith in the elf, it was just a feeling he had about it. “I think we’ll be getting some nightmare waves soon enough. And I don’t think we’ll be able to destroy the dungeons.”

    “Have some faith.”

    “I’d like to,” Theo said. “But we know how these things go.”

    “I wish you were wrong,” Salire said with a nervous chuckle. “We’re not going to die, are we?”

    Theo tried not to, but he laughed. “You know I have an emergency parachute, right?”

    “What do you mean?”

    “I could drag everyone to Tero’gal right now if we needed. Well, it would go better if we had all the shards. But I could do it.”

    “That’s encouraging!” Salire said, brightening up significantly. “Anyway... Enough of that. Let’s do some alchemy!”

    “Hooray, alchemy!”