I've got a new job now, so I suppose I can't be called Sora-sensei anymore. Oh well! Here's the nextchapter,enjoy~

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Briar found Karu, Rien, and Grandpa Thur in the kitchen, eating breakfast.

“Briar’s here!” Karu announced cheerfully.

“Briar-ni! Briar-ni!” Rien called out.

“Yes? What is it, Rien?” Briar asked.

“Briar-ni, when is the surprise going to be ready?” Rien asked, unable to hold back her curiosity. Karu’s ear seemed to twitch as he also was curious.

“If all goes well, then we should be finished in three more days.” Briar announced.

“Three more days!?” Rien exclaimed in dismay. “But I don’t want to wait three more days! I want to know now! What are all those strange drawings on the walls? Why do they have to be placed only in certain places? Tell me, Briar-ni!” She pestered.

“No, don’t tell her anything, Briar, my lad. I’ve spoiled her enough. A little waiting isn’t going to hurt her.” Grandpa Thur interjected.

Briar shrugged. “I’m sorry, Rien. You heard Grandpa Thur. You’ll have to wait until we’re done.” She slipped the item in her hand into her magic bag. Now wasn’t the time to reveal such a thing.

“Boo! Unfair!” Rien pouted.

“Instead I have a little gift I made for you so that you can pass the time while waiting.” Briar added, bringing out a hand-carved kendama.

“Ooh! What is it, what is it!?” Rien asked gleefully as she jumped out of her seat to get a closer look at the curious object. Karu also left his seat to get a closer look at it.

Briar showed off tossing the ball in the air, tapping it off both ends of the hammer, and landing it back on the spike that held it, perfectly. But, unlike a regular kendama, this one gave a reward for being able to accomplish the goal. A brilliant picture of a flower bloomed on the top of the ball. After a few moments, though, the image faded away again.

“Woow! Let ME try! Let ME try!” Rien reached for it.

“Can I try too?” Karu asked eagerly.

Briar placed her hand behind her back and tapped her chin thoughtfully with the kendama, as if considering letting them play. But then she grinned and pulled out another one from behind her back and handed each of the children a kendama.

“Yay! You’re the best, Briar!” Rien said, trying, and failing to hit the ball with the hammer.

Karu managed to hit the ball once, but then missed the second time.

“Ahem! I believe you should finish your breakfast first before playing with toys.” Grandpa Thur coughed.

“Oops! Right, sorry Grandpa!” Karu and Rien returned to their seats and hurriedly began eating the rest of their meal.

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Briar helped Grandpa Thur step down from the scaffolding, and they looked around at the finished product. The pillars were a work of art. Whatever part was not covered in magic characters, was covered with carvings.

In order to make way for the characters, Grandpa Thur had moved his carvings to the backs of the pillars, giving the whole structure a rather ethereal look, as if this were a temple of sorts. Briar whistled in admiration.

“Not bad for a collaboration, eh?” She added, twirling the charcoal stick in her hands.

“…Child, if this is your definition of ‘not bad’, then I’d like to find out what sort of thing you’d call a masterpiece.” Grandpa Thur huffed.

Briar scratched her head. “Well, we can’t do that until it’s finished, right?”

“Ah” Grandpa Thur realized. “You mean the power source, right?”

“Precisely~” Briar hummed.

“Well?” He asked.

“Well what?” Briar asked in reply.

“We’ve carved all these runes everywhere, but can you keep your end of the deal?” He glanced over at Briar.

His face was not as stern and scowling as usual. She could sense from the stiffness in his movements and the gleam in his eye that he was both nervous and curious as to what Thera could possibly use for a power source.

“All right, I guess it’s time to show you.” Briar grinned slyly as she took a glowing item out of her backpack. It resembled a glowing crystal; however, instead of being see-through, it had opaque, silver mirror-like facets, which swirled with rainbow colors. Briar liked it because it reminded her of the rainbow light which seemed to swirl on soap bubbles.

“What do you think this is?” Briar asked him.

“Why, isn’t that-ISN’T THAT MITHRIL!!? How on earth did you get Mithril around here, Lad!? There’s not a silver vein for miles around!” Grandpa Thur blustered.

“A spot of rather good luck~” Briar tossed the mithril ore into the air nonchalantly.

Grandpa Thur hesitated, then shook his head.

“I can’t see how this is going to become the power source. It’s rare, I’ll give it that, but the only thing it can do is make things more mana conductive. It’s also hard, but adamantium can beat it flat in hardness.”

Briar smiled. “Well, of course it isn’t. But it is rather important in that it is both durable, and mana-conductive, so it fits my requirements rather perfectly.”

“What are you talking about lad?”

“We’re going to build an artificial power source!” Briar announced.

“Oh really? And how are we going to do that?” Grandpa Thur huffed. Briar noticed little feet in the passageway, and could hear the breath of two little people with her very good sense of hearing. She pulled him a bit farther away from the door and began whispering.

“Well, you see…..”

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Briar stared at the dull red glow coming from the vent before her. Already, temperatures in this room were well past the boiling point. If not for the specialized skin-tight barriers that Briar had placed around her and Grandpa Thur, they would have already fainted through contact with the excessive heat.

Mithril was indeed the perfect metal for what she had in mind, but the downside was that, in order to forge Mithril, one needed high temperatures and mana input to shape it. In other words, you needed a magician and a blacksmith.

However, in lieu of a blacksmith, a magician would do just as nicely, as long as they had a high enough mana capacity. This is because, while heat can remove the impurities from the metal, only mana can soften it up enough to give it form.

Therefore, Briar was acting as the magician, and Grandpa Thur was there to help with his knowledge of metals so that the Mithril wasn’t wasted.

If left for too long in the heat, the metal would turn brittle and easily be shattered. But, if it was not left in long enough, the impurities would impede the flow of magic, resulting in a failed product.

In other words, they only had one chance to get it right, or else they would dash their only hope to pieces.

Briar held the metal over the glowing vent. Although lava was not flowing into the room, it was providing more than enough heat to purify the ore. Black specks appeared on the surface of the ore and slid off, crumbling into dust, although the ore itself hardly changed as time went by.

After a while, Grandpa Thur nodded. The ore had been sufficiently purified. They retreated from the rather hot room, after Grandpa sealed the vent up again. The room slowly returned to the milder 90 degrees Fahrenheit that it normally would display.

Now was the easy part. Briar poured just enough mana into the ore to make it soft like putty. Any more, and it would be a puddle, and unworkable. She quickly separated it into two strips, and then turned them into two bracelet-like objects, while using her superior mana control to create magic pathways.

Runes quickly began to appear along the outer and inner edges of the metal, providing protections, functions, and fail safeties. Grandpa Thur watched on as Thera added spells that he knew, and, on occasion, spells that he did not know.

Finally, Briar sighed and stepped back from the table, dispersing the heat barriers that she had forgotten to dispel. Grandpa Thur stepped up to the table and picked up one of the bracelet-sized ring. It was cool to the touch, and the runes were already fading into the metal-the sign of a finished product.

“It’s right pretty, but I cannot sense any power in this. Is it functional?” He asked.

“Oh, it’s functional, all right.” Briar replied. “Don’t let the rings touch each other, though. Let’s install it first, and then we’ll gather in the hallway after packing everything up.”

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Rien and Karu had magic satchels filled with the items from their storage room around their waist. Grandpa Thur also had a carpetbag filled with his magic implements and an intricately-carved black cane that Briar had never seen him use during her time here below.

“If there’s a bit of walking to be done, then at least I won’t be without support.” Grandpa Thur said gruffly in reply to Briar’s curious gaze. “Get on with it. We’ve all been waiting for this time, after all.”

“Then, Karu, You’ll take the east position; Rien, the South; Gramps gets the North; and I’ll be at the West point.” Briar indicated, bringing each person to their position. Rien was quivering with anticipation as she stood in her spot. Everyone looked to Briar, who held the bracelet-like ring in her hand.

“[Time and space displacement-portal activation: begin transfer]!”Briar cried out in English, touching the ring to its twin, which had been carefully embedded into the floor at the center of the circle.

A bright light flashed as the mana began gathering around them, thickening into a near-solid, swirling mist. The light grew brighter and brighter until everyone had to close their eyes against the sharp brightness.

Then a breeze blew past, scattering the mana fog away. When they finished blinking the spots from their eyes, the two children gaped with wide eyes and mouths at their surroundings.

They stood halfway up a mountain, overlooking a vast land, with forests and villages, and rivers running along their long-carved out paths.

Briar tossed the silver ring over to Grandpa Thur. “Keep it. If you want to return underground, then I built in a return function that works by feeding magic crystals into the center of the ring. But only magic crystals will work. It will not accept your personal mana at all, so it’s safe to wear on the wrist-”

“Grandpa! Can I wear the magic bracelet!?”Rien cried, looking up at her Grandpa with a practiced sparkly-eyed begging look. Karu seemed interested in the magic function, but he didn’t want to wear such a girly-looking trinket on his arm. Wordlessly, Grandpa Thur relinquished the bracelet into her hands.

“Oh, Goody! Grandpa, why is the sky so blue!? What are those many lumpy green things down below? What are the puffy white things in the sky? What are…” Rien instantly began shooting off questions a mile a minute.

Karu shook his head, while Grandpa raised his arms in defense, trying to get her to slow down with her questions so that he could answer them. Briar laughed, and then fished out a map to confirm their location.

The rivers, the towns, the forests…yes, it seems they were spot on. They had landed halfway up Plateau Mountain, the location of the Ten-year Students Contest.

Briar grinned and turned around to look up at the mountain. She could hardly wait.