Other than the weird glass-like prison orbs, there was the large cracked crystal to take note of. Without a doubt, it was the dungeon core of this abandoned dungeon. It must had been years since this thing was hijacked by the Order Knights, which caused the cracks across its glassy body.

“Ah. It seems that you’re already here,” a voice called out to me as I was studying the dungeon core.

Mauri was already casting her spell when she warned me, “Boss! There is another one here!”

Across the room, by the entrance, there was a rugged old man wearing a luxurious coat. His half-cape was adorned with expensive accessories and jewelry, and the heraldry he wore resembled that of the Order’s.

“I sensed that there was a Constant here,” the old man huffed. Although his voice was deep and gruff, his tone made him sound energetic and young, unbefitting his looks.

I stopped Mauri from casting her spell any further and simply sighed. “Satel, why do you look like that?”

“Boss, you know him?” Mauri asked me as the old man approached. As he got closer, he threw his walking cane to me.

“Very nice cane. I’ll keep it,” I remarked as I studied the sturdy, gold-tipped cane.

“I knew you would say that. Besides, I don’t need it. This body won’t be of much use for long,” the old man said.

“This body?” Mauri asked.

“Wait. Have I seen you before?” The old man turned to Mauri, seemingly ignoring her question.

“N-No?” Mauri answered as she shook her head in confusion.

“Satel, this is Mauri. You’ve seen her before, back when Ellysa tried to ambush me.” I then turned to Mauri and continued, “Mauri, this is Satel, the wood nymph you saw in the academy.”

“The wood nymph?” Mauri asked.

The old man laughed then shook his head. “Let me introduce myself for real.”

He clutched his chest and bent over in pain while coughing blood. Mauri took a step back in surprise, but recovered quickly. She started walking up to the old man to help him when suddenly, the man’s chest burst open. A small fleshy humanoid ruptured out of the gaping hole and blood splattered all over Mauri’s face.

The spirit froze on the spot, trying to register what just happened. There was visible shock shown on her face, then she fell down on the floor screaming.

“Bahahahaha! I love doing that!” Satel shouted as she emerged out of the old man’s body while still covered in blood.

“A-..A-... A fairy?!” Mauri stuttered.

“Oh ho, you know that I’m a fairy. That’s very surprising. Nowadays, my kind are simply lumped together with the rest of demonkind,” Satel remarked as she started wiping the blood off her body.

“Mauri’s a spirit, which could explain why she knows,” I noted. With a wave of my hand, blood started separating themselves away from Satel and Mauri, piling up in a floating blob of blood just before falling onto the floor messily.

“I heard that fairies were body snatching demons, but I didn’t think it literally meant that fairies snatched bodies!” Mauri exclaimed.

“There’s that. Was there another Constant here?” Satel asked as she started flying up.

“There was someone who was close to becoming one. Now there isn’t. Mauri doesn’t even know he existed in the first place,” I explained.

Resting upon my shoulders, Satel hummed quietly then said, “So that’s what happens when two Constants fight?”

“How many Constants have you fought before?”

“The leader of these guys and you. That’s pretty much it. I was imprisoned most of my life in that damned tree. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t fight you.” Satel sighed.

“Putting that aside, how did you know where I was?”

Satel shook her head then answered, “I didn’t exactly know where you were. Just a while ago, your companions managed to catch that Order lieutenant, and I caught wind that this was a base used by them, so I rushed here.”

“I took the quickest path here so there should still be plenty of leftovers for you guys to kill,” I said.

“Then that’s good! It’ll be kind of disappointing if I rushed all the way here only to find out that you killed most of the people here,” Satel sneered. “The boys made bets on who could kill the most Order meatbags.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel a chill running down my spine…” Mauri offhandedly remarked.

Once again, I turned my attention to the dungeon core. I infused a bit of my essence into the crystal and analyzed it. Mauri also did her own examination, and after a few minutes, she confirmed that the dungeon could be used.

“However…” Mauri muttered.

“However… what?” I asked.

“... this thing seems to be linked to some other place. I’m not sure how. I think it’s some kind of communication line towards another base.”

“Can we cut it?” I asked.

“Wait, Boss. I think it’ll be better if we keep it. If we keep communications open, we could even spy on the enemy. Plus, it’ll buy us more time before the Order figures out that we managed to hijack this base,” Satel suggested.

“That sounds good.” I nodded.

“But in order to maintain the link, someone or something must be tapped into the core at all times, which is strange, since it seemed that the link was maintained until a few seconds ago,” Mauri added.

It must had been Overseer Althur whose existence was removed. His removal from the world had caused a lot of complicated paradox which was solved by simply sweeping all the problems under the rug lazily. All the things he wrote, made, and shared still existed, including my own memories of him, but the universe simply overridden them by simply proclaiming that someone or something else did all those.

Without my memories of him, or probably of the Grandmaster’s, Althur would cease to exist wholly.

“Satel, do you have that rune I gave you before?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. You asked me to hold onto it since I figured that I would have a better chance of finding a dungeon than you. It’s a bit too big for me to carry it around so I had Daggerless hold it for me. He should be arriving right about…” Satel paused for a moment waiting for the right moment.

“BOSS! IT’S ME! The one and only… DAGGERLESS!” Daggerless’ voice exploded from the entrance of the dungeon room. He strode towards me with two bloody daggers in his hands, bloodied from the unlucky Order Knights he slaughtered. “It’s a good thing I wasn’t late for the party. Anyway, what’s going on here?”

“Daggerless, give me the spirit rune,” Satel ordered.

“Aye, aye, Boss Satel.” Daggerless promptly fished his pockets and handed her a piece of pebble with a rune inscribed onto it. I took the pebble and injected mana into it, causing it to glow. Moments later, a transparent blue humanoid was conjured in the air from the pebble in a sitting position.

The abrupt teleportation caused him to hit his butt on the floor, and he rolled around in pain. “Gods be damned! Who in the Abyss summoned me?!”

“Yo. Remember me? I ruined your dungeon,” I greeted as I crouched down.

“Ah. It’s you. And…” He turned to Mauri and raised his head up in surprise. “The Spirit of blah blah blah Death and Life.”

“If you’re can’t be bothered with my real name, couldn’t you just call me Mauri?” Mauri retorted.

“Whatever. I have business with the robed man, not with you,” the spirit huffed then stood up. He noticed the purple crystal floating quietly in front of him, then inspected it.

“Very impressive. This is much more powerful than the Angolian dungeon core which I bound myself to previously. But I know your kind. What is it you want from me?” the spirit asked when he was finished with his inspection.

“Straight to the point, huh. Simply put, there’s a link between this core and another ‘abandoned’ dungeon, so I need you to maintain that link,” I replied.

“If that is all, then I don’t have any problems with that.” The spirit shrugged.

“That’s not it. Any reports or information you get from the link, give it to us. Also, if you could, send any reports we give you back into the link,” Satel added.

“So we could feed the Order false reports?” I asked to which Satel nodded.

The spirit stared at us then shrugged once more. “If that’s all, then it’s fine. But I can tell this is going to be so troublesome. The ones on the opposite end of the link won’t be happy if they find out that you’ve been pissing on them, right?”

“We’ll take care of it when the time comes,” Satel assured.

“Just so you know, I wanted a dungeon so I could relax in the mortal realm. If an army comes knocking on my doorstep, I wouldn’t hesitate to snitch you on them,” the spirit warned.

“Fine by us,” Satel agreed.

“Alright, Mauri,” the spirit said with a annoyed tone and continued, “you’ll have to help me bind myself to the core. That’s what you’re here for, right?”

Mauri nodded then began the ritual to bind the spirit into the dungeon core. I studied the entire process while Satel was busy playing around with the orbs scattered across the rooms. It didn’t take too long for the dungeon to reactivate once the spirit took control of the dungeon.

“Hey. Since we’ll be dealing with each other for a while, what’s your name?” I asked.

“I never bothered with giving myself a name. Why don’t you just call me the Angolian Dungeon Spirit or something,” the spirit tiredly replied, sounding as if he wanted me gone as soon as possible.

“Angeon, then,” I said.

“Wait, what kind of name is-...”

“I won’t hear any of it. I blew up your dungeon once, don’t make me blow this one up as well,” I threatened.

“Tsk. Strong-arm diplomacy doesn’t suit me at all. Hey, there’s a bunch of weird people killing each other inside the dungeon. I assume some of them are yours, so could you finish up here?” Angeon complained.

“Just treat it as a clean-up crew.”

As my companions finished cleaning up the dungeon of any Order Knights, we began gathering all the loot we would bring back up later. After all, the students were still outside and a bunch of strangers carrying large boxes would too be conspicuous. Angeon agreed to let the things sit there for a while while my companions disappear off into the forest to fetch some minions to help them carry the loot.

At last, Satel, Mauri, and I left the cave which we entered from.

“Alright, Boss. I’m still busy with the whole ‘War with the Order’ business so I’ll be taking my leave soon,” Satel noted. She was about to leave when I heard one of my students calling out for me. Without a choice, I stuffed Satel back into my robes.

“Teacher! There’s a giant flaming bird rampaging across the forest!” the student shouted when he found me.

I massaged my forehead then sighed. Why the hell are my students attacking my pet cassowary, Cass?

From what I could get from my student, a group of students found a giant bird and attacked it since they wanted some exotic bird meat for dinner. As it turned out, the giant bird erupted in flames and fought back, causing half of the class to go after it.

Didn’t the heroes know about my pet? Where are they?

I lowered my head and whispered to Satel, “Why the hell did you bring Cass with you?”

“You see, I needed a ride. The bodies I use are not undead, so it could get tired or worn out from running for too long,” Satel whispered back.

That makes sense. Oh well. No use complaining about it now.

I decided to use my shadow minions to look for the heroes and have them dissuade the class from attacking Cass any longer. After all, if anyone’s going to turn Cass into dinner, it’ll be me!

“Huh?”

“What’s wrong, teacher?” the student asked.

I cycled through my shadow minions one by one. Each group had a pair of shadow following after them so that I could watch over the students, but a pair of shadows were missing.

Kendra’s group was out of my sight.

“Mauri. Take the students and bring them back to the camp. Fighting a magical fire bird in a middle of a forest is a dumb way to die, and as teachers, we have the responsibility of keeping the students safe,” I ordered Mauri to which she followed immediately. She took the student with her and ran down a path which she made previously.

Once she and the student was gone, I placed my hand against the ground, and tried to locate Kendra through essence location. I felt uneasy as I sensed that mana around Kendra’s location was strangely disturbed.

“What’s wrong, Boss?” Satel asked.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I muttered as I began running towards where Kendra was.