I stood in front of a door. It was plain and wasn’t decorated. We were in a secluded part of a castle, where we had to walk a long hallway from the main corridors. I thought we were lost but the king confirmed we were in the right place.

“So, we’re supposed to enter one by one?” I asked.

“Yes. Since you are the eldest, perhaps it’s better for you to enter first,” The king suggested. If the wise king said so, why not? I pressed my hand against the door and slowly pushed it. I entered the room while the door closed itself. Inside was an empty white room. In the middle of it was a table and two chairs, with a lady in red sitting.

She was startled by my entrance and stood up. I noticed that this lady was the same woman who was with the priests that visited the dwarven palace as well as the receptionist back at Aon.

“Ah! Milord! I didn’t expect to see you here! I...ah...I wasn’t prepared for this!” She nervously greeted me.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

“Oh..erm...we met back at Aon and…”

“No, no. Have we met way before that?” Every time my pasts comes back to haunt me, I would have this feeling of familiarity but I didn’t have it talking to this woman.

“Well...I guess...you wouldn’t remember me...since I was just an angeling…” She had a dejected look then shyly looked away. I walked up to her to get a closer look.

“Wait, you’re an angel? Hmm….I see! No wonder I couldn’t remember! You were such a cute kid back then!”

“C..C...Cute?! N-no..no, milord! You embarrass me!” She shyly waved her hands trying to deny it.

“You were such a small child, but now you’ve grown into such a refined woman!” I commented, nodding.

“Refined?! Ah..hah…,” She embarrassingly replied.

“What are you doing here? I mean, why were you working as a receptionist?” I asked.

“Oh. Well, tough times have befell the heavens so I had to look for a part-time job…” She answered. She offered me the seat and I took it.

“That’s harsh,” I noted.

“Oh, no. milord. I was sure it was my fault that I had to do part-time. I should’ve expected it yet...” She sighed as she took the seat in front of mine.

“Ah. You’re such a nice and humble girl. No wonder you’re an angel!” I laughed.

“No...no! I don’t think so! I’m….umuu…” Her face was getting red. Could angels get sick?

“Hey, are you alright? Let me check your temperature.” I pressed my forehead on hers and she yelped.

“Oh, right. I can’t feel the temperature. Ah, that’s rather embarrassing for me.” I shrugged as I took my seat again. The angel had a blank face for a while so I waited until she calmed down.

“So...what am I supposed to be doing here? You’re supposed to give me some riddles that I wouldn’t understand until the last minute or what?” I asked.

“Oh, well. Because you’re an undead and you would be working under the Goddess of Light as her hero...or temporary hero...You’ll have to fill in some forms. S..Sorry for the trouble.” She bowed awkwardly. Though she does part-time, she must be having trouble with her confidence. Keep going, I’ll cheer for you!

She gave me some forms to fill in with a quill and ink. There was a huge pile and I went over a bunch of them until I got tired.

“Ah...there’s so many of them! What’s with this? Are they all even necessary? Exemption List Form...Nondisclosure of Miracles Form...Oh come on! I feel like I’m dying all over again!” I complained.

“I’m very sorry…” She bowed again.

“No...it isn’t your fault. Well, is there another way? Could I get a replacement for me or something?” I asked.

“Well...I’m not sure. It’s hard to come by heroes….it’s not common...but..maybe if you summon one? I’m not sure, it’s never done before,” She suggested. Hmm? Summon?

I checked within my robes. I had a lot of scrolls tucked within my robes and inside my chest cavity that I had been collecting and making over the past thousand years. I let my hand feel through the scrolls, looking for that one scroll. Ah! There we go!

I pulled out a small scroll and rolled it open. I wiped the dust off the scroll then read the details about it.

‘Summon Hero’

Warning! Choking hazard!

Excellent! This could save me all the work! I could just give whoever I summon to the heroes and run off with the money! I asked the angel to borrow the room and she happily did so. She also offered to help me and I didn’t have any problems with that.

Using mana, I etched the runes onto the white floor and prepared to channel my powers onto the runes while the angel gave her mana as well, speeding the process up. As the runes activated, it started to give out a lot of light until it started forming a circle.

Out of the portal, a body dropped down. A overweight boy with white hair, wearing a black long coat with a red bandana on his head rose up and did a pose. He was wearing some kind of fingerless black leather gloves. Behind his back was a wooden long thin sword.

“I HAVE COME AND ANSWERED THE SUMMOOONS! WHERE IS MY BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS THAT WOULD GREET ME AFTER THE SUMMONING?!” He shouted while trying to flutter his long coat.

I swiped my hand and undid the entire ritual. The circle of light swallowed the boy and disappeared. I quickly skimmed over the scroll once more.

“What? Did I read this wrong or what? I thought I had the ‘Summon Hero’ scroll, not the ‘Summon Monstrosity’ scroll…” I scratched my hood. I assumed that the scroll was faulty and decided to return it to my robe. Tsk, fraud!

“Ah...well..milord! Look in bright side! It summoned something from another world, though!” The angel tried to comfort me. Ah well, no use crying over spilled milk. I decided to just fill in the forms and leave. I had better ask the king for some more money…

I bid my farewell to the angel and promised to drop by from time to time. The rest of the party also did their divinations and it appeared that only I had a different type of divination. For the rest of them, it was like a hole in the ceiling talked to them and gave them a bunch of riddles. I was sure it was just a prank by those working in heaven, but I didn’t say anything.

.

.

.

“This is the dungeon. From here on, you will be training,” The king instructed. He personally led the heroes’ party to the walled part of the capital. The dungeon was guarded heavily by knights and I could say they did a remarkable job keeping the place shut tight.

According to the king, the place was used by elite knights to train and was kept a secret to the public. The dungeon was really old, so they didn’t know what could lurk at the bottom of the dungeon as none of the elite knights really made it far inside the labyrinth.

The heroes excitedly ran down into the dungeon. What are these fools doing?! They could get themselves killed! They reached for the doors and I waited for the end of one of them….but nothing happened.

Hmm...we went down to the first level of the dungeon. The place was lacking all the tension of the dungeons had a thousand years ago. Back then, even the doors attempted to murder you. The floor slowly tried to eat you and all types of batshit insane monsters would attack you. Dungeons were some of the most gruesome places but this place wasn’t any of that.

There were monsters, but they weren’t even a problem to the heroes. This place was too easy. These kids won’t be able to train properly!

A slime came out of the wall and hopped towards the heroes’ party. The party took formation, being cautious about the blob. I could feel the entire party was tense. But why? Just smack the damned thing! The slime jumped towards the leader of the group and the entire team except for the elf started to panick.

“FOR MY FRIENDS! TAKE THIS!” He dramatically swung his sword at the slime and cut the thing into two. It harmlessly plopped onto the ground and melted away. With the defeat of the slime, the team cheered.

“WE DID IT! WE KILLED THE MONSTER WITH OUR TEAMWORK!” The priestess girl cried with tears on her eyes.

“I...I thought I was done for! I...I feel so tired…” The black-haired idiot of the band of idiots whimpered.

“We...we should rest here for now,” The duke’s daughter suggested.

What?

The kids huddled together and started to rest, with the elf squatting and keeping watch at the distance darkness with his bow ready. Alright, I was unsure how these guys survived those thugs at the Duke’s castle town of Mierra, but I knew that these guys need more than just training.

“Hey, kids. I’ll be...back. Keep training,” I excused myself off before I could hear their complains. I knew the insides of most dungeons and this place had a basic construction. I ran my hand through the walls while infusing mana onto the surface until I found a switch. A part of the wall vanished and revealed an empty room which acted as lift between the floors, including the control room. I entered and slowly moved down to the control room.

‘Ding!’

As I walked out of the lift, I saw the core of the dungeon levitating in the center. A spirit was sitting on a chair when he noticed me.

“Hey! Where the hell did you come from?!” He got up angrily.

“From the lift,” I answered him as I walked to the core.

“Hey! You can’t touch that! You can’t even access it!”

‘Access granted.’

“WHAT?! How the hell did you get in?” He angrily demanded answers.

“Default password. Let me see…..huh. The settings are normal but, you have a pretty low mana resource pool,” I noted as I poked the core.

“Well, sooooorry if I can’t get more mana! I could only afford standard engines, you know! Do you know how ridiculously pricey those things were?!” He threw the book he was reading onto the floor. His things were just scattered all over the control room.

“I’m going to pour mana into it,” I informed him. He complained and grumbled that it would be ridiculous trying to fill a dungeon mana pool but I ignored him. I pressed my index finger onto the core and tried to pour just a tiny bit amount of my mana.

Crack.

Whoops.

“What did you do?!” He complained again.

“I...poured too much mana into it,” I explained.

“You broke my core! It’s like breaking my house! Are you nuts?! Pay me! Pay me baaack!” He cried as he shook me.

“Wait. Wait. I’ll fix it. Just not now. I have to go babysit some kids. Don’t you have a manual somewhere? It should tell you how to manually operate the dungeon.” I walked over to a barrel of paper and books. I scrounged the barrel looking for the manual for the dungeon when I stumbled upon a scroll. It was a royal receipt for the purchase of the dungeon. It had the seal of the royal family of Follis and with it, Sarjay’s sign. Wait, what the hell?! This looked real damn fancy! I could take this to Sarjay to give him this as nostalgia souvenir.

“Hey! I’m taking this!” I waved the scroll around. The spirit just sighed and let me take the receipt. I stuffed the receipt into my robes and found the manual. I tossed it to him so he could find the instructions for manual operations.

“I can’t do this! I bought the dungeon because it had the bare minimum automation!” He complained as he read through the manual.

“How about this? I’ll spawn some monsters in the dungeon,” I suggested.

“No! You’ll just break something else! You’ve already wrecked more core!” He rejected.

“Fine! I’ll fix it later. I’ll go take the kids somewhere else!” I ran back to the lift and went to the floor the heroes were in. When I appeared out of the wall, the heroes jumped with surprise at my sudden appearance.

“Teacher? Where did you come from? And do you know what’s going on? It’s like the torches on the wall flicked then the monsters stopped coming,” The black-haired hero asked. What the hell was this kid’s name again? I’ve already forgotten, he’s like a pebble on the ground. I’ll just nickname him Blackhair.

“Alright, this dungeon isn’t doing much good to train you. How about this? Let’s go to the forest to train. There should be better monsters in there,” I suggested.

“What? But there’s no monsters in Esses Forest. It’s practically the safest forest in the entire continent,” The duke’s daughter remarked.

“Hey, hey. I’m the teacher here. We’ll figure it out. I’m sure it’s a better place to train. Come on.” I lead them out of the the dungeon and into to the forest to train up. Before the heroes head to the forest, I gave them a day to rest while I investigated the forest.