Inside the mayoral office, Kana is sitting behind an overly-large desk that is buried in paperwork. An exasperated expression is painted across her face as she stares at the mountainous piles before her.

"Why was I given the hard job," she pouts as a knock on the door forces her to compose herself.

"Come in."

In walks deputy mayor Sacha, carrying with her another pile of paperwork that needs the mayor's approval.

"Really? I've only been here two days. How is there already so much work to do?" She complains, slouching back in her exquisite and ridiculously-comfortable leather chair.

"It is due to the copious amounts of refugees that fled here from the different villages of Gorn. A lot of the petitions are from business owners wanting to open their own establishments here, within the city," deputy mayor Sacha kindly reminds her.

"Yes I know, Sach. I just feel like I've been stamping away all my life."

"Well you kinda have. If you don't include the meeting for role delegations of city management then you literally have," Sacha kindly reminds her boss of another well-known fact.

"God's damn it Sacha! Now I feel worse. Screw it! I'm taking a break." Putting her feet up, Kana folds her arms and pouts before closing her eyes.

"Madam Mayor, I don't think you really have the time to rest right now. If you want, I'll run down to Ali's and grab you some lunch?"

At the mention of Ali's, Mayor Kana is hooked. Deputy mayor Sacha was created at the same time as her higher-up, yet she has already found many various ways to get her Senior to continue working. Food from Ali's never fails.

"Will you get me one of those blueberry roulette thingies as well for after?" Mayor Kana is already in the deep end, dreaming of dessert. Wrapped around her junior's little finger, she barely registers the next question about what main she would like.

"It doesn't matter. I've been craving that sweet blueberry taste since yesterday afternoon. Anything will be fine for dinner," she smiles whilst remembering yesterday's meal.

After deputy mayor Sacha leaves the room, Mayor Kana redirects her attention to the stack of papers on her desk

"May as well get back on it with it like I said I would, huh?" Shrugging her shoulders, the document she looks at is about a guard detail for town.

"Don't we already have that?" Thinking about the strong presence of high level beings that answer to her master, Kana notices a problem in her master's city that she seems to have overlooked.

It turns out that Abi didn't create a duplicate Black Barracks for outside the dungeon. That means that the human population in town doesn't actually know that there's people protecting them at all times. The undercover Assassins in plain sight are a deadly security force that keeps them safe.

With that thought in mind, Mayor Kana writes down the problems she has discovered onto a parchment with many other scribblings on. It's almost full of different suggestions to bring up with her master when she has finished filling the page.

As she puts her pen down, her belly rumbles in a very unladylike manner causing her to blush even though she's alone in her office, "Where's Sacha!?"

Dungeon Stories Volume 2

Many different requests get filtered into me through Mayor Kana. Some of them, I end up berating myself for not noticing the problems in the first place.

However, today isn't one of those days.

On the first floor of my dungeon, Kana is listing off buildings and features that need creating as I finish work on the Mages Guild. I summoned ten Mages earlier on, but they were all unspecialised. I completely forgot that they had to attune to a crystal inside the Mages Guild to find out what their specialities are. I unlocked the Arch Mage class for my trouble though. Once the Mages have had their proficiency tested, I can hand them over to Hana and Mira who will then assign them shifts on either guard-or-scout duty.

Although, if I keep doing that, I'll eventually have more guards than citizens.

I suppose there are other jobs for them too. The Mages Guild being one.

Once the guild is completed, I summon ten Arch Mages and unlock the Magus class. I don't think I've ever seen a Magus so I'm going to assume that they're really strong.

Naming the Arch Mages, I also listen to Kana as she continues the list of diverse requests she is reeling through. She eventually reaches one that grabs my attention and I stop naming the magic casters on the spot.

"Tilly's ready to open her clinic now? Yes! Tell her it will be ready shortly and that hopefully, I've got the perfect assistant for her." I'd spoken to Tilly about opening a medical building when I originally offered her a contract. Although she accepted, the healer said that she wanted to wait for a while longer before she started helping other people again. I guess she's finally ready.

It's about time too. Ever since I became haunted by the voice of my best friend, I've had this crazy idea. I just didn't want to enact it until Tilly was up and healing again in case something goes wrong. Plus, there were the refugees and shit got really busy. But now it's time to remove the pleasantly-familiar-yet-haunting voice in the best way possible.

Mayor Kana's suggestions for improvements come to an end. I thank her for the hard work that she's putting in before I disappear outside to build Tilly's Clinic.

The Healer's Hut is another one of those features I unlocked a while ago and has gone unused as there was no one to run it. Placing it in a new section of town that I've been creating close to the housing district, there are no humans around so I'm able to build freely without using Divinities Creation. Once built, it reminds me of the shed the dungeon priests used to use when they were first created. Small, wooden and pathetic. After two quick upgrades, however, it has become the Surgery of Soothing.

The Rooms of Recovery have been upgrade to Surgery of Soothing:

Blessed by the mana natural regeneration in this building is improved 250% percent

Any treatment conducted within is twice as effective as before

A new feature has been unlocked:

Operating Table: 10DP

Rewards:

8XP

White marble bricks make up the outer foundations of what is hopefully not a busy place. A pristine reception area sits behind the main doors and seating is arranged in orderly rows. Down the hall are rooms for patients which are also neat and orderly. Further in are a few offices and more rooms for recovering patients.

It's already quite big compared to my other buildings. It's even larger than the Academy which has an adjoining building. I wasn't even expecting to need this many rooms. Why do I feel like this is going to turn out to be one of those things?

What things? I'm sure I've already mentioned this Abi but 'things' does not help me understand what you are talking about.

I don't know either to be honest, Me. I just feel like I'm going to regret this somehow.

Nevermind though. Shit's already as crazy as it can be so what's the worst that could happen.

Tilly arrives in high spirits. After seeing that the clinic is more of a hospital, her eyes are sparkling and she is raring to go. That is until I explain that we're going to try and revive the soul of my dead best-friend into one of my mages.

Stumbling for an answer, Tilly's enthusiasm disappears and she frowns at my words. She then opens and closes her mouth a few times before pointing her finger at me and then lowering it. Eventually, after many different hand gestures and facial movements, she sighs in defeat as she cannot begin to understand the mind of a Dungeon Core.

"Of course we are. I don't know why I was expecting something easy to start with," she smiles. The sarcasm is clearly noticeable in her voice.

Maybe I am being hasty, but living with the haunting voice of my dead friend is not something I'm enjoying. If she could hear me when I respond to her, it wouldn't be half as bad. But as it stands, I've had enough of this one way communication.

"Sorry, Tilly. It's a strange first job, huh?" I try to play down and make light of the situation.

"Strange? Strange!? Everything here is strange. What you're doing here is strange. Hell, I'm even stranger for accepting the contract and enjoying the comforts around me, knowing full well that they're being provided by a dungeon. The people, or monsters, or whatever you call the creatures you create, are also strange. They're so... Human. They've even got their own personalities. They have thoughts and feelings like everyone else. They laugh, joke, and they're all so nice. In fact, they're nicer than most humans I know. So... Strange is the name of the game here. I don't know why I was expecting anything else." Calming down, Tilly smiles at me and heads into surgery.

Once inside, she turns to me with raised eyebrows, "How are we going to do this then? I've never heard of any spell like this. Not any legal ones anyway."

"Well, it's not so much of a spell but more of a feeling," I explain, whilst not really explaining at all.

"A feeling? Really? So you don't actually know if this will work then?" Horrified at my terrible explanation, Tilly shakes nervously and looks as though she is ready to bolt for the door.

"I can hear her calling out to me. We died on the seventh floor of this dungeon... Well, not this dungeon exactly... It's a long story and very strange as you would put it. " I summon a soulless Magus onto the bed inside the room. Tilly watches in shock as a woman in white robes appears on the bed. "Either way, I'm pretty confident that I can do this. I need you to be ready though, just in case something goes wrong... or right, I suppose."

Staring at the lifeless corpse on the bed, I try to concentrate on Anya's voice. I've been ignoring it recently so it feels harder than it should be. I suppose it is my own fault for being so busy all the time.

"Abi?"

Finally hearing Anya's ghostly echo, I try to focus on her voice as she calls out to me. It's almost as though the sound is everywhere and it feels as though I'm grasping at straws as I try to connect them all together.

Tilly watches as I pull and push the air above the lifeless Magus. To her it probably looks as though I'm doing a dance-of-sorts rather than trying to rebuild or reconnect my friend's soul. In all honesty, I've got no idea what I'm doing. But now that I've started, I can't stop.

Why did I even think I'd be able to do something like this? I'm not actually a soul guide as my skill would imply. I'm just me. Abi. A person that died and doesn't want to die again.

I keep pulling the chords of my friend from around me and somehow manage to bundle her solitary word together with other copies of itself.

Tilly's face is awash of shock and confusion. As a Healer, she knows better than most. That people don't come back from the dead, especially not when they died more than fifty years ago. Seeing and believing are two different sides of a coin today though and Tilly watches as long golden-strands of incorporeal matter sew themself together above the body of the woman on the bed.

I'm not oblivious to the sheer wonder of it either, even though I was still unbelieving of my own task a moment ago, the golden-yarn that knits itself into a spherical shape above the Magus gives me chills.

What I'm attempting shouldn't be possible. I know it. Tilly knows it. Hell, everyone in Tironia knows it. People would say that what I'm doing will fail as the reincarnation cycle is a well-known fact. Souls don't just linger around after the body's demise.

Here I am though, performing the impossible without any clue as to what I'm doing. Blind faith and a strong hope in my own efforts has got me this far.

As soon as I feel the last call of my name enter the golden sun before me, I know that it's ready. Again, I have no idea how I know, I just feel it inside myself. She's ready.

Willing the soul inside the lifeless body, we all watch on with baited breath to see if what I did actually worked. Or if I was just creating a light show.

A single word releases me from the anxiety-inducing breaths I wasn't even taking. The same word which has haunted me ever since I hit the seventh floor. No longer the ghostly call of an unseeable being though, the still-solitary word came from the lips of the female Magus on the table. The lips of Anya.

"Abi?"