“Can you see it? I mean, um, sense it?”

I would have looked quite odd to someone looking, but at least they wouldn’t have seen me talking at a ball. The conversation, at least, was in my head.

I’d decided to do some research while I waited for my gambit to bear fruit. It was going to be a few days before Marseau left the city. I had no idea if the Tribal Council could get an ambushing force in place in time. They did seem able to move quickly, but could they put together sufficient forces? There was no way to know.

I would be sad if they waited until he finished with Mandel’s dungeon. Well, for all I knew, Mandel would be able to beat Marseau. It was the fight he wanted after all, but I couldn’t help but think it was the Baron that held the advantage there.

Waiting to find out the outcome was killing me, but interfering struck me as a spectacularly bad idea. Instead, I would be spending my time shoring up support amongst the local community and distracting myself with experiments. In a few days, we’d be able to start delving again, but with the backlog of adventurers, the Guild had started a lottery for delving slots so we weren’t all fighting over slim pickings.

We had not been lucky in the draw. So for now, there was this.

In one hand, I held my Dungeon Core. In the other, I held an enchanted plate that must have seemed like an expensive mistake. It held our largest mana crystal to date. Grade 3 - the highest grade that Felicia could currently make, with 56 mana capacity. It was about two centimetres across.

The reason someone might think that I had wasted this expensive crystal on a failed or unfinished mistake was the tendril of mana that had been whipping around randomly but had now been directed into the Dungeon Core.

I’d learned that when a spell or magical enchantment needed to be controlled by the user, there needed to be a mana connection from the controller to the spell or item. For a spell, this connector was simply part of the spell. For an item, you generally just needed to be holding the item. Even mundanes with no magical skills could project a zero-length magical connection. (Perhaps project was the wrong word there.) Rune circuits seemed able to take direction from a mana input that came into it from anywhere on the circuit or the magical metal substrate.

If you wanted to control an item remotely, you needed to get creative. There was a rune pair that let two rune circuits connect to each other, but you didn’t actually need it. You could just add a little offshoot line at the right spot. Left on its own, it would just slowly spew out mana, but if you used [Theurgy] to connect it to a mana pipe, it started acting like a USB port, able to transmit both power and data. Hopefully, power in one direction, and data in the other.

Of course, doing anything with [Theurgy] was much harder than any other way, but in this case, I didn’t have an option. I couldn’t carve runes onto the Dungeon Core, so all I could do was wave a mana conduit through the damn thing and hope it caught somewhere.

“Ah!” Rhis said. “I think I caught something there?”

I carefully moved the conduit back to where it had been. Something tugged on it.

“Yes… I can feel a mana connection.” Rhis said. The connection seemed stable, so I carefully released my mental grip. Everything stayed in place, and a quick [Identify] showed that the mana crystal was discharging.

“Speak up if you feel your power diminishing,” I said to Rhis, while keeping an eye on the mana crystal. If there was any doubt that my INT score was raising my mental capacity, then maintaining two separate sensoriums would have put that to rest. Slowly and carefully, I stopped feeding mana to the Dungeon Core.

“Everything seems to be fine?” Rhis said. “Is that what you wanted to test?”

“Not quite everything,” I replied. “Can you… project yourself down the connection?” That was the best description I had for using that particular spell.

“I’ll try,” Rhis said, but even as he did, I knew that it had worked. A five-foot-tall image of a fox-like humanoid sprung into existence as [Phantasmal Emmissary] was triggered by the item.

“Welcome to the real world,” I said, sitting back and taking a good look at the new Rhis. He looked just like his image back in the Core mental space, which made sense. He was looking around confusedly, but slowly a big grin spread across his fox face.

“Are you kidding me? You made me a new body?” he asked delightedly.

“It’s an illusion,” I said, waving dismissively. “It will disappear when the mana runs out. Speaking of which…” I glanced again at the crystal in my hand. It was over half depleted from casting the spell and would run out in about an hour at this rate. Still, that wasn’t a problem. I recharged the crystal with my mana and handed the enchantment to him.

“I can hold things? Real things?” he asked. He examined the enchanted plate closely, turning it around and looking at it from all angles. I winced, my experience with cables making me expect disaster, but the mana conduit simply adjusted, untangling itself as fast as he could tangle it.

“Yep, it looks like it takes 15 mana an hour to maintain your Core and a bit more than that to run the illusion. So that crystal should last about three hours before you’ll need re-charging. You can’t go too far from the Core though.”

“This is amazing.” He started prowling around the room, touching surfaces with his free hand.

“It’s the least I could do,” I said, amused by the way he was touching everything. “For now, I think it would be best until you stayed in here, but how about we introduce you to the rest of the people who live here?”

I left him in my workshop while I gathered everyone in the kitchen.

“Everyone, this is Rhis,” I said, leading him in. “Rhis this is-”

“Oh, I know some of these people,” he said, grinning at my friends who were staring in shock. “You’re Kyle, you killed a lot of lizards. And you’re Felicia, you always knew the way to go in the jungle.”

“You’re really… the Dungeon?” Felicia asked. “You were watching us?”

“Of course! It's not like I had anything else to do when people were inside.” He looked at the others and cocked his head. “I don’t recognise you two. How many lizards have you killed?”

Cloridan stared for another second, and then shook himself. “Not many,” he admitted and stepped forward with his hand extended. “Cloridan’s the name, pleased to meet you.”

Rhis stared at the hand for a moment. He must have seen adventurers greet each other in the Dungeon because he took the offered hand and pumped it up and down with enthusiasm.

“This is fun! Do I get to shake hands with all of you?”

Cloridan laughed. “I don’t see why not. This is Cutter by the way,” he said, indicating our final member.

“Oh! You’re so much smaller than the others!” Rhis said, moving over to shake Cutter’s hand. At the last moment, he remembered to let go of Cloridan’s, saving himself from an embarrassing tumble.

“Uh, yeah,” Cutter said, clearly not sure what to make of the situation. “Do you want to see my knives?”

“Do I? Of course I do!” Rhis said enthusiastically. After looking at me for permission, Cutter led him away, presumably to his room.

“Just make sure you stay in the house!” I called after them.

“Soooo…” Felicia said, trailing off. “Um, why?”

“Well… he’s a sentient being,” I said. “I just couldn’t stand leaving him trapped in that Core, unable to experience anything. And I’m nowhere near ready to set up a Dungeon.”

“But he’s… a monster, isn’t he?” she asked uncertainly.

“Not like any monster I’ve heard of,” Kyle said. “There are plenty that can talk, but I’ve never heard of friendly ones.”

“He’s not a monster, he’s a monster controller,” I said. “Which… makes it even weirder that he is friendly.”

“Didn’t you say that it was the Dungeon controllers that were forced into becoming homicidal by the God of Destruction?” Felicia asked.

“I did,” I admitted. “That’s what makes it weird. I think that it might be because as the Master of the Dungeon, I’m stopping the corruption. Or it could be because the Core isn’t fully powered.”

“But isn’t he dangerous?”

There was a shout from the other room, and Rhis came in at a run. Brandishing a long knife.

“Ha! I know this one!” he said, as Kyle moved to cover him. “I’m not supposed to kill people.”

I sighed and covered my eyes. “Maybe don’t wave a knife around when you’re trying to reassure people, Rhis.

“OK?” He looked at me, and then at the knife, which he was now holding quite still above his head.

“Just put the knife down,” I said. “And anyway, he should be incapable of hurting anyone with that body.”

“What?” Rhis exclaimed. “Oh, wait, that’s a good thing.”

Baby steps. I told myself.

“He’s holding a knife,” Felicia pointed out. I pretended not to notice how Rhis brightened at that.

“Yes, but he shouldn’t be able to put enough pressure on it to hurt anyone,” I explained. “Phantasms can hurt people, but only if that’s the only option to preserve the illusion of solidity. Try stabbing the table, Rhis.”

He moved against the table with enthusiasm, only to find that his knife stopped dead against the wooden surface.

“It’s too tough,” he complained.

“No, it’s the way the rules work,” I said. “It’s easier to preserve the illusion if you just stop pushing, so that’s what happens. If you don’t give it a choice…”

I conjured a thin needle. Placing it upright on the table, I pushed it with the flat of my palm. At first, nothing happened, then the needle sank into my palm.

“Ouch,” I said. I cancelled the needle and let Felicia send a little [Healing] my way. “With that setup, the needle could go into me, or the table. Cancelling my momentum did nothing because my hand was a constant force.”

“It could have snapped,” Kyle pointed out.

“Yeah, but it was too tough for that. Oh, and when it’s forced to do damage, it takes an equal amount, so it stops existing when the damage equals the spell total. Which is… a decent amount now, admittedly.”

“So I could do it if I pushed slowly?” Rhis asked.

“Maybe, but I think since you - the Phantasm - are the one supplying the force, it just stops you from applying the force.”

He tried it nonetheless, but it seemed to be true. No matter how hard he pushed the dagger, it failed to go into the table.

“So what now?” Felicia asked, somewhat mollified.

“Well, we can’t let him out on the street, but there’s plenty inside the house for him to learn about.

“That’s right!” Rhis exclaimed. “I still haven’t learned the names of all of Cutter’s knives!” He rushed back out of the room, almost stumbling over Cutter coming in. “Come on, let’s go back to the knives!”

“He’s certainly enthusiastic,” Felicia said.

“Long term… we’ll see if we can take him on expeditions. At the very least, his hearing is excellent.”

“That’s true… you don’t seem the type though.”

“What type?”

Felicia grinned wickedly. “The mothering type. This is the second stray you’ve taken in after all.”