Congratulations! You have acquired the title Dungeon Overseer.

As I read the notification, I let my hand slip off the smooth, milky sphere that contained Flora's soul.

'Testing, testing... can you hear me?'

'Loud and clear!'

'Alright, next is...haaap!'

I closed my eyes, clenched my fist and concentrated hard, and after a second, I appeared on a spot 15 meters to my left.

'Wow! That's amazing!'

'Yeah, I expected it to be harder to pull off, at least until I was used to it, but it's almost as if I'd been doing it all my life.'

There were a few seconds of awkward silence, as neither of us really knew how to continue the conversation from there. Eventually, she spoke forth, with a slightly hesitant tone.

'So, umm... how long will you stay here?'

'Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, didn't I? Do you see anywhere in your System an option that says... 'Teleport', or something like that?'

'Yeah, but— wait what? I was sure it used to say Relocate right there! Now it just says... Compress?'

'Compress, huh... Also, if you already knew about the relocation feature, why didn't you use it before?'

'Umm, I'm not sure, I just didn't know where I would appear, and it felt kinda scary...'

I could hear the fear in her voice, and immediately decided to change topics.

'Don't worry, It's different now. If you press it now, and if it works how I think it works, you'll turn very small and I'll be able to carry you with me.'

'E-eh!? Really!? I can go with you?'

'When have I ever lied to you? I suppose I have to exit before you can use it though, right?'

'Mhm, it's greyed out right now... but are you sure you want to carry me with you? I don't want to be a burden...'

'Oh come on, don't say dumb things. I would love nothing more than gaining both a travelling companion and a field of flowers to lay in whenever and wherever in one go, you know? Alright, press Compress as soon as I exit okay? Don't worry, I'll deploy you right away afterwards so we can talk again.'

'Roger!'

I laughed once again, and I exited the Dungeon through the spatial portal.

After a scant few seconds, the portal started to... somehow fold in on itself, again and again, until it was compressed into a sphere of black space. It floated in the air for a few moments, then suddenly started to change from black to grey, to misty white, and fell down into the sand after it had completed shifting.

I picked the sphere up. It was so small that I could form a fist with it in my hand and barely any parts would be left uncovered.

'Wow... It's like a miniature version of Flora's Core...'

'I know right?'

'Flora!? Wait, we can communicate even when you're in this form?'

'Oh, I thought you already knew! I just found out too, after hearing you!'

'That's... really awesome. How about your senses, what can you see... or feel?'

'Not a lot, just a small circle around me... maybe two or three steps in each direction?'

'That's... quite small. You'll probably get bored unless we talk a lot, huh?'

'Oh, I have an ability that lets me speed up time, and enter this weird groggy state, where I won't wake up unless anything important happens. It's what I used to avoid boredom these past few decades!'

'Waiwaiwait, decades?'

'Oh, I didn't tell you? My System says I'm a 63 year old Dungeon!'

'Oh wow... Then again, I'm over 2100, so I'm not one to talk...'

'You're WHAT!? You're suuuuper old! You could be my great-great-great.... a lot of greats-grandfather! How is that possible?'

'Hahhh... I suppose we have a lot of catching up to do. Okay, let's start from the beginning. You see, I died in a fire...'

And so, I continued my journey through the lifeless desert, but no longer was I bored. I spent a full day and a half telling Flora my story, and from then on we continued chatting about mundane and stupid things.

She was just like a bright sun, constantly lightening my mood and helping me cheer up. Giving me the human contact I much needed after 2000 years of practical solitude.

I learned a lot about how her System worked, and we even made plans for future development of the Dungeon. Of course, all that would have to wait until I could hoodwink twenty-nine unsuspecting souls to enter and exit through the portal without knowing they technically got repelled by the dungeon. We had tried to cheese the System by having me enter and exit the Dungeon repeatedly to see if it counted as being repelled, but only the first time I'd exited had actually given her a point.

Of course, I hadn't even considered going for the second option. I wanted to protect Flora's innocence at all costs.

Fortunately, her DP was basically just processed soulforce, mana, vitality and other energies that delvers carried inside or that flowed into the gate, so I could easily empty my mana pool inside the Dungeon and charge her up, meaning, after deploying her, we didn't have to wait very long to be able to compress her again and keep moving forwards.

Or, well, at least it would be that way after exiting the desert, since with the annoyingly low mana levels, it took me over eight hours to fully charge up even if I minimised mana expenditure. It would be faster if I could actively draw in mana from the air, but I didn't have the skill nor the Skill for it.

The Skill was called Mana Manipulation, and it could be learned with enough effort, since it was a must-have for all the mage classes. I didn't seem to be very talented at magic though, since even with my Intelligence, I still hadn't grasped it.

Instead, I had constantly been using [Grand Appraisal] on the portable version of Flora, since it seemed like the object that would give most experience to the Class Skill, being so mysterious and all, and was also the only way that I could strain my soul without thousands of repetitions.

It had paid off, as a few days ago the Skill finally reached level 2, but the reward was just a small improvement in efficiency, meaning it would cause less soul strain, and slightly more power, meaning more extensive and detailed information. Of course, that could always be adjusted. At the minimum level, the result of the appraisal would only show [Air] or [Sand].

Other than that, I still spent most of the time mentally chatting with Flora. She was wonderful at relieving my boredom and livening up the mood, and another boon of travelling along with her was that I could use her Dungeon as a dimensional storage, just like those spatial rings in Xianxias or the Bags of Holding in western fantasies.

I didn't know if any of those actually existed in reality though, as the information was too precious for [Olden Knowlegde] to give it to me.

I'd been scared of losing my stuff at first because everything left in a dungeon that comes from the outside will get decomposed into energies to fuel the DP bar, but Flora had assured me that if she purposely excluded something from being decomposed, it would stay safe and sound. Fortunately for the unassembled pieces of my left arm, she was right, and nothing was lost.

Of course, the storage wasn't as convenient as your usual spatial storages from fantasy worlds, since taking something out would take at least two minutes (the time it took the portal to decompress plus what it took me to go in and out) and then exhaust about 80% of my mana (what it took to fill up Flora's DP), but it sure was a hell of a lot better than just carrying a half-destroyed backpack everywhere.

I still had on me the things I may need in a pinch, though.

And so, for an indeterminate number of days, we ventured forward.

'So, Flora,'

'Yeah?'

'This is probably a stupid question, but would you consider yourself to be the Dungeon Core, or the Dungeon itself?'

'Hmmm, I think I see the Dungeon as, like, my body, and my Core is like... my brain or something? It's very different from a normal body, but I think I'm the Dungeon.'

'Interesting... but wait, doesn't that mean that every time I go through your portal, I go inside her—'

I immediately regretted making that mental comment, forgetting our thoughts were still connected.

'Yeah, but like I said, I don't really think you can like, really compare my Dungeon to a body... Instead, what'd be weird is you being outside of it!'

'Hahaha, I suppose you're right... hey, look! There are trees up ahead! I can see them in my [Map]!'

'You know I can't see your map, right? I wouldn't even be able to see them normally with my tiny vision! You bully!'

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I just got a little worked up, since it means we might be able to finally exit this fuc- this freaking desert!'

'Yeah, I wanna get to a city! Because I want to... well, there's not much for me to do in cities anymore, but I want to get to one!'

'Haha, yeah, I want that too.'

The sparse trees soon came into view, (mine, not Flora's) and with them came a steady and gradual increase in the density of atmospheric mana.

Some weak monsters such as Sand Lizards and Coconut Apes also started appearing, and eventually the savannah-like biome once more started shifting into something resembling a temperate forest.

At one point, my [Map] caught what had to be a frontier settlement, but, to prevent myself from stumbling over the same rock twice, I decided to bypass it while looking for monsters to get me to level 25.

Unfortunately, none of the ones I found exceeded level 15, meaning they would give my infinitely close to zero exp. I stopped murdered them though, after asking Flora to retract her range of 'vision' to around 10 cm around herself.

'Yeah, exploding guts would still be too much for her.'

'Hey, I can hear you, you know!?'

'O-oh. Please wipe what I just said from your mind.'

Let's just say, I hadn't quite accustomed myself to constant mental communication yet.