***Cherise Manabella Irenthi’s POV***

When they returned back to the edge of the village, that boy, Anther, was there waiting for them. He held both hands above his head and waved with a big grin plastered on his face. Rybo gave an enthusiastic wave back with one thick arm. Cherise lifted her hand in a small wave as well, a wry smile on her face.

The boy looked at the adult standing watch (more over him than the surroundings), who gave a small nod, and then ran over to meet them.

“How was it? Did you figure out the second puzzle? Isn’t it amazing?”

Cherise felt the instinct to crouch down when talking to a young child, but the boy wasn’t that much shorter than her.

“So you did go inside. You didn’t even ask if the dungeon was safe or not.”

“Is it?”

She nodded and Anther grinned, “I knew it. You can tell as soon as you go inside; nothing bad feels like that. I knew it was a good dungeon.”

Cherise recalled the plant-infested dungeon interior, which she had been kept out of by a nasty pit trap. She could imagine why an elf would be entranced by a place like that. She smirked slightly. “You know, Anther, usually, I wouldn’t know what the inside of a new dungeon looks like. Inspectors aren’t supposed to go inside the dungeons they test.”

That revelation seemed to daze the child. He stood motionless for a moment before blinking and smiling awkwardly. “What was that?”

“I said, inspections are supposed to be performed as close as we can get to the limits of the dungeon; usually right outside the entrance. Wouldn’t it be bad if the dungeon was making poisons or diseases and the inspector got sick?”

“Um, okay,” he nodded.

“Your dungeon’s a little special, though. I may have gone in for a bit of a look.” She frowned and shook her head, “I did something bad in there that I shouldn’t have. It was very unprofessional.”

“What did you do?” the boy tilted his head, worry creasing his face.

“I got a little violent,” she said with a small, regretful smile. Then she brightened up a bit, “But you’re right. It’s a good dungeon. It was quite docile about the whole thing. Normally they would fight back more.”

Anther frowned. “But you apologized to it, right?”

“Of course,” she smiled. “I believe we came to an understanding. Now, I’ll go inform the elders, priests, and my superiors that the dungeon is safe, and you’ll be allowed to go inside as early as next week.”

“Next week?” he groaned. “Why? If it’s safe, can’t I go now?”

Cherise smiled stiffly. “You think just anyone is allowed inside a dungeon? You have to be registered with the guild to be allowed in. Next week, though the guild house will still be under construction, we should have all the basic paperwork here, and you’ll be able to apply.”

“What happens if I sneak in anyway?”

He says to my face! This child…

“You won’t be allowed to sell any materials you find at the guild; if something happens and you get hurt inside, nobody will know to come looking for you; you’ll be going in blind, without any access to the latest maps and monster data; and if anybody catches you, you’ll have to pay a fine for illegal dungeon entry.” Cherise sighed. “These rules are in place to protect the dungeons, you know? We keep out people who would want to take the dungeon’s core, and we keep people out when they’re ready to make a new floor so that they can build safely. It’s better for everybody if you follow the rules. Understand?”

The boy thought it over seriously, then grinned. “I understand, Cherise.”

She gave a satisfied nod and let the boy scamper off to somewhere

Cherise went back to her room in the tree hotel thing and wrote a report for her guild master. Since he had seemed interested, and this was a special case, she included as much detail from the surveyal magic as she could. She smiled after finishing and leaned her head out the window, she fished a small silver whistle out of one of her pockets and blew on it, producing a sweet, high-pitched sound. There was a shrill cry and a bird came to her window sill. It wasn’t like the green-on-top blue-on-bottom Nimhe birds civilians used. This was an Illitrix: bred and used by the guild for quick communication. It had a medium-sized sleek black body. Instead of avoiding detection (during the day at least), this bird prioritized speed, with a bit of fighting strength to protect its parcel. Cherise herself put a small camouflage magic on it before letting it depart with her letter.

With that done, she went to inform the village leaders about what had happened so far and what was going to happen in the near future.

***Archimedes’ POV***

Archimedes had decided on the second floor’s theme and was furiously digging more space to work with. This floor would be specifically designed to turn back impatient, hot-headed, magically inclined demons, so its theme was floor puzzles. Floor puzzles required patience and composure to traverse; the area would be impossible to cross otherwise.

The rooms were going to be used as rest areas and breeding grounds, but the standard hallways were much too narrow to make a good floor puzzle. He had spent considerable time and effort doubling the width of the first hall. He also increased the depth by a meter for almost the entire length of the hall; there was only a meter of solid floor before the sudden drop. He put a wooden sign there, reading ‘No Cheating’.

Archimedes made enough tall wooden platforms for someone to cross to the other side and arranged them in a pattern that was difficult to guess. After that, he filled the rest of the hole with a moderately viscous, and very sticky, white tar. He’d encountered the stuff in his last life when humans had started bringing it in, trying to trap his boss monsters so they were easier to fight. Their kind had suffered long-term for that decision when he turned their invention against them.

Archimedes covered the rest of the tar pit with thin wooden platforms that looked just like the solid ones but were actually extremely fragile. A cave rabbit could probably break them under its weight. It was impossible to see any tar through the wood, so it simply looked like a tiled floor to the unwary. Once they fell in, unless they had something to weaken the tar, they were stuck. Coincidentally, the body fluids of slimes were among the things that could dissolve the tar. Archimedes would have Thesia waiting on this floor to free anyone who was polite enough to let her. And if they tried to fight their savior, then they wouldn’t be saved.

There had to be some way to solve the puzzle aside from trial and error, so Archimedes left a clue somewhere people tended not to look: on the ceiling. He made the Glow Moss growing there clump up more densely directly above the safe platforms. The light produced by Glow Moss diffused quickly in the air, so it wasn’t like there were spotlights shining down on the correct path, but it would be pretty obvious if they just looked up for a moment.

He lost a lot of floor space to this puzzle, obviously. To compensate for the lost productivity, Archimedes grew a lot of plants that could root themselves in the walls and allowed small animals and insects to burrow a few feet into them. After that, he had to stop and save up mana for a while. One of his main intentions for this floor was that magic would be unusable here. There would be no flying past his floor puzzles or making solid floors out of ice. No teleportation either.

He could make every floor a no-magic zone if he wanted to, but many of the educated people he was looking to attract were likely to be mages, and he didn’t want to risk driving them away by banning whatever lifestyle and healing magic they were accustomed to having. He would try to limit all of his anti-mage defenses to this floor and fill it with technically non-lethal traps to compensate.

In the worst case, if he already knew a mage was hostile, he could use this floor as an ambush zone, sending a bunch of monsters to attack them before they realized they were defenseless.

As blocking all spell use was a change that dealt with the law of nature on one of his floors, it was a considerable investment, but he thought it would be well worth it someday.

Fifty thousand mana for a floor-wide ether conversion array. That will take me ten days without using my cheat, but with it…

Archimedes released an order to all the little critters in his dungeon, telling them to quickly reproduce. A shiver seemed to collectively transfer among the small mammals and insects, and a ferocious mating season began. The drive was intense, and the line between species was crossed more than once, not that it led to anything. Archimedes watched this spectacle and ran a few calculations in his head.

Let’s cut that to five days.

***Anther’s POV***

Many people had come to Genenwell Village over the past several days: demons like Cherise and beast people like Rybo, but also elves from the city. They appeared from nowhere, it seemed like; stepping out one by one from some swirling blue thing Cherise made where the guild building was going to be. They brought strange animals and materials with them, moving busily and often looking at some ticking black and white thing Cherise had happily stuck into the grass by their work site. For a while, Anther didn’t even leave the village to play; he was too amazed at the sight of a strange house being built up like furniture. He was stunned when an elf worker told him that all the buildings in the city were made that way.

So much was happening that was new and exciting to him, and he unintentionally forgot about everything else. He only took breaks from watching the workers when he needed to sleep, eat meals, do his chores, and... ensure that his more and more frequent pauses didn’t interrupt his enjoyment.

“Anther, sweetie, can you come help me with this?” a warm voice called up from below.

The elf boy jumped slightly and put the lid back on his medicine bottle. “Coming, mother!”

He scurried down the ladder and took a thick glass jar out of Anniil’s hands, looking at it curiously.

“Hold that tight,” she said, grabbing the silver lid with her hands and twisting. Anther almost let it slip, but he quickly held tighter. With a loud pop, air finally rushed into the jar and the lid came loose.

The woman sighed and set the jar on the counter, using a wooden spoon to scoop some thick white stuff out of the jar. She mixed it into a pot she had over the fire; her focus was clearly back on whatever she was cooking. Anther’s curiosity wasn’t satisfied yet, however. He kept staring at the silver disk on the counter and poked it a few times. It was cold to the touch. The clear jar was strange too. It was very, very smooth. He flicked it with his finger (which hurt a bit), and it made a pleasant ringing sound. They reminded him of some of the things he’d seen near the guild’s work site.

“Mother, what are these?”

Anniil glanced over for a moment, then kept a careful eye on the food. “It’s something those friends from the city brought with them. You know how baking mud gets you hardened clay?” The boy bobbed his head up and down. “These are made by baking different kinds of,” she tilted her head in thought, “rocks, I guess.”

“Is it a present?” he asked, looking at the shiny disk hopefully. “Did they give it to you?”

Anniil chuckled. “That beast friend, Rybo, heard I make good pies. He wanted me to make a meat pie and put this in it. Supposedly, it will make the filling thicker and richer.”

She eyed the jar. “I think it’s some sort of animal fat, but I don’t know how they got it so white.” Anniil shrugged, “Anyway, I was told it burns easily, so I have to be careful about--!” Almost on queue, a flame started on the surface of the pie mix where her spoon had taken too long to stir it. She put it out as quickly as she could, but it left some charred bits behind.

“Oh, troll spit,” she cursed under her breath, quickly trying to scoop out the ruined parts. As she was doing that, another flare appeared on the opposite side of the pot. She ended up stuck in a cycle of putting out flames and scooping out charred crust until there wasn’t enough substance left to fill a pie. The woman sighed and put out her cooking fire, eyeing her failed dish gloomily. Her son glanced at the pot then up at her and spoke innocently.

“This just reminded me: I heard Tether and Thalam saying that there was a fire in their kitchen the other day.”

Anniil looked down at him with widened eyes, then she couldn’t help laughing. “So that’s how it is. Vestiil gave up on it so now I get to try?” She snorted with a firm attitude, “Well, I’ve almost got the hang of it already, and my pride as a cook won’t let me back down now,” she frowned, “but we’re out of meat that goes well in pies.”

Anniil fiddled with the cooking rag tossed over her shoulder, then smiled sweetly down at her boy. “Anther, sweetie, would you quickly hunt something for me? Something like pheasant or rabbit would do nicely. I’ll even make an extra pie for us so we can see what’s so special about this white fire hazard.”

The boy’s mouth watered in anticipation and he bobbed his head up and down. He scurried up the ladder to grab his bow, quiver, and sack. Luckily, he knew a place nearby where he was guaranteed a good catch.

He knew he wasn’t supposed to go into the dungeon before becoming an explorer, but it would be fine if nobody caught him. He didn’t need any maps, and he didn’t need to sell the materials. The dungeon was safe to go in--Cherise said so herself!--and he wasn’t going to do anything bad to it, either. There were no reasons left to keep him from going in to hunt an ashy black rabbit or two.

The ambient mana hit him hard when he got close to the entrance. It was much worse than before; enough to make his head spin. He had to put a hand against a tree to steady himself and took a few minutes to adjust. When he felt more steady on his feet, he trotted up to the door and started to move the tiles the way he’d practiced. When he pushed on the door to slide them, though, it just opened on its own.

It’s unlocked?

The boy blinked in surprise and peeked around the edge of the door. An elf-shaped wooden doll, taller than him, but without any real features, stood facing him. Anther stared and tilted his head, and the doll tilted its head back.

“Um, hello,” the boy said unsurely. He looked over and saw some tools sitting on the ground behind the door. The door bar had been removed, and it looked like a very long, thick spring was in the process of being attached to it. Anther realized that he was interrupting some sort of maintenance and lowered his head in apology.

“I’m interrupting. Sorry,” he said, closing the door voluntarily.

Was this the type of thing Cherise was talking about when she said the guild helps dungeons build in peace?

He was getting ready to sit against the wall and wait but remembered that Anniil had said to be quick about catching something. With a bit of guilt, he cracked the door open again. “Umm, can I come in after all? I just need two rabbits, and then I’ll go right back.”

The doll didn’t respond to him. Anther wasn’t sure it could even understand him, but it eventually stepped to the side, apparently letting him pass.

“Thank you!” he bobbed his head. The boy rushed to the back of the hall, shot two rabbits, and stuffed them into his pack faster than he ever had before. He trotted back to the entrance, thanked the doll again, and shut the door behind him.

So that’s how dungeons fix themselves when they get broken? he thought pleasantly, trotting down the mountain.

While remembering the strange wooden person, something flashed in his mind’s eye: an image on the wall; a statue in the grass. His trot slowed to a shuffle, and then he stood still.

Huh?