The day swiftly passed, and after the huge drink-fest they crashed at Dikez, whose house was upstairs. By the time Dikez's father, Dikez Senior returned the party was up and ready to depart.

On Alter, the day and night cycle were the same as on Earth, just like there were only one sun and one moon.

They departed at eight in the morning after Dikez junior got his ass handed to him from his father for having sent away his assistant without making him wash the glasses and plates the night before.

Dikez senior looked like a carbon copy of his son; the only difference among them was their build, in which his father not only was heavier but dressed heavier. Using Dikez's words, his father was a "para-tanker," which Gabriel understood was an off-tank with the ability to inflict much heavier damage. He wasn't sure why Dikez didn't simply describe him as a Bruiser since he was sure the class existed, but there would be time for explanations later.

The previous night had been spent discussing their strategy and preparing the healers for their "aggressive" approach.

Aggressive sounds rather weak as a word to describe what they told us yesterday, or maybe it's me being just too new at this. Though Olive was a bit taken aback by them, too, I guess we should just wait and see.

About preparations and expenses, the party had divided them this way: Dikez brought meals, beverages, and paraphernalia for camping; Carla, the tank, brought Health potions and bandages, while Sigmund would bring Energy elixirs, drinks, and equipment to keep weapons efficient, together with a space enhanced storage for the loot; that left the two new recruits with Mana refills and Spirit salves since they were the only ones which would be using them; thankfully Olive took fare of that as well, going out with Clara before the shops closed the day before; leaving the boys to get to know each other better.

Turtle Island was located northwest of Kanceldom Island. It was higher up than it, but not that much.

If Gabriel had not had negative effects from the altitude change, he would have at least some after reaching Turtle Island. There was a Tier 2 restriction on the dungeon. Which, thankfully, would not be applied to his party, considering Sigmund's connections to the people responsible for managing the Star-harness and, at the same time, his father being the second in command of the elite wyrm hunting party.

Money and power open the way for many things, including doors, society, legs, and dungeons, it seems.

They left the city, reaching its northwestern limit, and hopped on a flying turtle. The thing was "manned" by an orc, the first Gabriel had seen in Kanceldom.

"Told you we would fly on one of those, Liz!"

"I wasn't exactly eager for it, but I guess it'll be more comfortable than the umbrella ride with Sig's father," Olive added.

"I could have let you borrow a couple of my old umbrellas, but I doubt you would have been able to handle them. Not only are they too big for you, but it needs a certain amount of Power and Resilience to handle the amount of wind it generates to get up there, not counting the need for a license," Carla said. The giantess revealed herself to be exquisite. She was practically a boy, probably exactly what she wanted to, noted Gabriel.

Gabriel recalled how a giant could have up to three times the base Attributes of a human: 17 maximum Affinity; 10 for Alacrity, 26 for Power, 18 for Recovery and Resilience, and 10 for Stamina.

They beat humans in each field, but Affinity, while they were terrifyingly more powerful than them.

Man, that's unfair.

The trip on the flying sea turtle was better than they thought and smooth too.

This one did not have a cockpit; it had seats mounted on top of it, up to 9 seats for giants, more than those didn't fit; thankfully, the belts could be tightened to hold even normal bodied people at bay, so Gabriel and Olive did not have too much to worry.

This is going to be my first real flight, Liz. Yeah, yeah, I don't remember the one with Larry, and even if I would; I pissed and shut myself, it wouldn't be a nice memory all the same.

As they lifted up, breathing quickly became harder for Gabriel, and a couple of minutes later, it became harder for Olive as well. The three giants were, instead, perfectly fine with the change.

But they had already prepared for it with their previous night's preparations.

Sigmund and the others had taught them belly breathing and the pressure breath, two techniques to quickly acclimate their bodies to the newer altitude.

They worked, though, only until they had reached Turtle Island's altitude; after that, their body needed time to acclimate to it; and techniques became of little use in the short term.

The island-dungeon paving in front of them soon displayed with all its beauty.

It had a shield around it, a massive circular transparent shield that shined once in a while; otherwise, it would simply be invisible.

"What the hell? I didn't think that was what you meant as a shield!" Gabriel said.

"No? That's the Dungeon's Mana-shield. Nothing to do with a regular Mana-shield. It separates the world from it and all the forces that affect it. Dungeons like that only have a few entrances, the rest is shielded by that, or it wouldn't really be a dungeon," Carla said.

"Why does it do that?" Gabriel shouted.

"You've got enhanced senses too, I know. I can hear you over the sound of the wind just as you can hear me," she clarified.

"Oh… right," Gabriel admitted.

"Anyway, when it shines like that, it does because the shield has intercepted something touching its outside or inside limits."

"Wait, so I could touch it? The shield?" He asked back.

"It depends… at Tier 1 it would probably override your Soul boundaries and mess you up pretty badly, might even kill you if you are weak enough. Wait, you are human. It would definitely kill you," she finished with a smile.

"Nice to know…" Rule number one, no touching the shield, stay as far away from it as possible. Liz nodded with him.

The primary entrance, and the closest one they knew of, was on the southeastern side of the Dungeon-island. It was an entrance beyond the terrain level. It was placed inside the rock, a few hundred feet from road level.

As they got close to it, he noticed that the shield was not present around the entrance's hole; it stopped before it. Granting a hole a few dozen feet tall and wide for people to enter. It was big enough to let the turtle land inside it and allow the passengers to get off.

"We're here," said the orc. Gabriel had no idea what his name would be, but he quickly understood he was called Makkpeth. He would not be waiting for them there; some timetables needed to be respected; it was a sort of bus service after all.

The cavern was shining with sparks here and there. There were shiny stones, pulsing in the walls of it, they released a light peculiar of unaltered Mana, and it was enough to light their passage.

"Get ready; there could already be monsters waiting," Dikez said.

"It usually is like that," Sigmund admitted, responding to Gabriel's arched eyebrow. "Alright, party up, accept," he continued.

It was Sigmund's time to raise an eyebrow at Gabriel's status.

"That's one stroke of luck, dude," he said to him in private; well, relative privacy, given that Carla too had enhanced senses and could thus hear their whispering easily, "didn't know one could unlock another of those Skills."

"I had no idea too," Gabe answered with a shrug, launching a look at Olive, which nodded slightly.

Obviously, the party leader was Sigmund. He had the Perks for it and thus called the shots. The formation was instead the following: Carla at the forefront with her twin shield, covering for everybody, Sigmund after her, had his greatsword at the ready, then the two humans stood next to each other in a pair, and closing the row was Dikez, he had two double-bladed battle axes, and wore a half body carapace armor, it was multicolored and not that easy on the eyes but seemed effective, or at least more than the weird leather armor setup which Sigmund had chosen.

Sigmund was effectively a crazy motherfucker; he had no real armor to sustain his not so good movability and practically non-existent defense. He was the core attacker of the group, and their aggressive battle style was based on him.

As much as a description of their battles could offer Olive and Gabriel a comprehensive knowledge about it, imagining it and seeing it up close were significantly different things.

Gabriel took in the elements of the dungeon, remembering what they had talked about earlier that night and some questions of basic knowledge he had managed to sneak in.

A party was made of up to 6 members. Each would receive a portion of it, the level difference not affecting the share. So now there were five of them, and each would receive a fifth of the experience, but they had to support the fight in some way or another; they couldn't simply stand there and "leech." The best thing Gabriel could do was help out as he could during the fight to at least earn a contribution. Of course, the bigger the fights, the better it was, yet the danger grew with it.

As soon as the first turtles started appearing, it was clear that even if it was called "Turtle Island," the monsters in it weren't exclusively turtles or tortoises; there were snakes, flying snakes, and weird gaseous birds.

The first place where they encountered the monsters was in a large room; the cavern up-reaching tunnel quickly opened up into a cave, partly covered by a water mirror.

One giant turtle and two a couple of water serpents, and two aquamarine birds covered in a gas of the same color wandered it.

The turtle was intent on doing nothing, resting by the pond bank; serpents danced in the bond, and the birds had made a nest on an outgrowth in the cavern's walls; it looked like part of a root from a big tree above.

"I'd usually shoot an Analyse here, not having much use of Mana, it's a good expenditure for me, but you can open the dances if you wish, Gabe," Sigmund said.

"Good."

Analyze! Gabriel directed it on the giant turtle; it was a monster with blue skin and rainbow carapace, likely a water element turtle, if he had understood.

Fire Serendipity Tortoise

Race

Reptile

Level 38

Class

Chelonia

?

Element

Water

Water - ?

Pools

Life

Energy

Mana

272/272

?

?

Attributes

Affinity

?

?

Alacrity

?

?

Power

?

?

Recovery

?

Bound

Resilience

?

Bound

Stamina

?

?

Serendipity? Hey… That doesn't sound right… 272 just in Life, what class level is that?

"Right, low level, well, I guess you should leave it to me then, no problem," Sigmund said.

"Sorry about that," Gabriel replied.

"Now, watch and learn while we fight with the turtle. You should watch for the birds; they are aggressive yet not that fast; once you've dealt with the birds, the serpents will start making trouble. They are venomous, but those ones don't go above level 25, so you should mostly be fine," instructed Sigmund. "Let's start."

Carla quickly exploded into a shout, the air displacement thanks to the shockwave visible for a second; it took Gabriel by surprise and sent his hearing in disarray for the next few seconds; but his spear was quickly at the ready, heart beating fast.

The two male giants used some buffing Skills, Sigmund becoming much, much redder than it should be alright, his mouth, ears, and nostrils started fuming, while a green wind quickly enveloped Dikez.

Then it started.

The turtle launched their way, hitting the ground with its short paddles, speeding up drastically once she skimmed the water. And just as it got out of it, its face distorted in a weird, but definitely aggressive, expression, the trio of giants engaged.

The first to launch was Dikez; he got inside the turtle's range at max speed, his axes slashing with a deafening double cleaving strike. The turtle felt the hit, one of its eyes already busted, the other side of its face dripping copious amounts of blood. It did not retaliate, stopping in its track and retracting its appendages inside the shell.

Clara was already in, but she had been standing in Sigmund's defense, ready for something, which soon happened.

Two snakes launched themselves at her, only to be swiftly intercepted by her shields. The snakes quickly decided to coil around their arms; that was when Gabriel had to start focusing on himself.

Olive shook him from his stupor; glancing forward, he could see that the birds were already upon them, their gaseous form descending from their nest in a way which could almost be considered gentle.

"They are amorphous; you won't be able to deal damage without enhancing your attacks with an element; leave them to me, go strike the snakes!" Olive ordered.

Gabriel nodded, a bit confused; Liz was already in action, but she too was too late. Dikez had already backtracked and had struck down one of the coiling serpents already; that was when Gabriel felt the shout and the "squash."

He turned his head to the direction of the sound; it came from where the turtle was located; it was a terrible mess.

Sigmund was standing in front of the turtle, the turtle being just a couple feet shorter than him. His greatsword was all the way inside of the beast, a spectacle of gore in front of him.

The stab had practically created a bloody hole where the creature's head was supposed to have retracted, successfully and inevitably killing it on the spot; soon, the beast crashed down, its legs giving out from under it and impacting the terrain with a heavy "thud."

The battle's sound swiftly ended with a couple more slashes coming from behind Gabriel as Dikez mowed down the second snake.

"Feeew!" the young bartender exclaimed, "That was swift. Did you Tier Berserk up?" He asked, turning toward Sigmund as Carla detached a piece of the dead coiled snake from around her arms.

"Yeah, Very Rare, now. Not bad at all," admitted Sig. "Nice job there, Olive."

As it seemed, once Skill evolved from their Basic form, they started being defined by rarity. Gabriel didn't know why, or more than that, but it was a detail he had gained during the previous drinking night.

Gabriel turned toward his right, checking on Olive. Both birds had fallen to the ground; their ethereal gas turned into an ugly looking violet.

"Thank you, these things are extremely weak to poison, good for me, I guess," she said, smiling.

"Poison, uh? I wonder if it could be helpful while fighting the bigger ones."

Gabriel was awestruck. The last time he had seen a fight with something that big was the fight against the behemoth that had attacked him and the cosplayers which had come to retrieve him. It had gone differently, but it hadn't been remotely as smooth as the one he had just witnessed.

Also, he had just realized that his only contribution had been an Analyze use, which had not counted at all toward the fight; he hadn't brought the slightest amount of contribution. Effectively excising him for receiving any sort of experience, if he had at least hit maybe even a snake once, he would have gotten the full brunt of it, but as things stood, he had not even managed to get an exp recap prompt.

Well, fuck me.

"So, we took a turtle; I'm curious to see how you work it," Olive said.

"Oh, that's pretty easy, look." Sigmund was quickly returning to his regular color. His skin turning back to his original pale skin glow. He removed his bag, taking out a flag with Vairstrazz written on it, and planted it into the shell, with one strike; the thing flagpole barely got in but seemed to have been solidly planted.

Then he did something Gabriel would have never expected him to do, he took out a weird PacMan looking thing, it was practically a silver sphere with an incision looking like a mouth, and inserted it into the creature's new neck hole.

The thing quickly changed color, becoming blue. It started squirming, then voraciously "chomping," exactly like a PacMan.

"What the hell is that thing!" Gabriel exclaimed; even though he was a bit repulsed by the gore, he couldn't help but draw closer to look at the weird object.

"Oh, you didn't know?" Sig asked.

"Actually, I don't know as well; what is it?" Olive joined.

"That's a Gobbler. It is used to speed up a dungeon Mana replenishing method, and at the same time, it helps us get rid of the unnecessary meat. We wouldn't sell it all the same; no clearance for it.

"What's he saying?" Gabriel asked after a second, turning toward Olive with a questioning look.

Sigmund chuckled.

"Well, uncle would certainly explain it better, but... a Dungeon Mana natural cycle is that of creating matter out of Mana and turning it back into it upon death of the object. Now, everything has its own cycle, so the flesh does essentially returns to the ambient faster than rock, but the Mana Gobbler speeds up the process transforming matter back into Ambient Mana. While at the same time, it frees us of the problem of 'de-caracapeing' the turtle's corpse; their covers being too tough for it to chew through." Sigmund explained, cleansing his sword with a cloth.

"I don't get it…" said Gabriel, while Olive went with an 'Oh…' of understanding.

"You mean to say that everything inside the dungeon is made out of Mana?"

"What else?" Clara added.

"But if the Mana goes back in the air-"

"Turns to Ambient Mana," Dikez rectified.

"-yeah, that, then why don't everything you have built with turtle skin and carapace disappear too?" Gabriel asked.

"Well, that's easy; once something is taken out of the dungeon, it becomes permanent. That's why we just hunt for the carapaces. If we were looking for meat, I wouldn't have used it. But we don't need that," explained Sigmund.

"Wait, though, if everything becomes 'real' when we leave, and since you eat turtle essentially, why didn't we take it for eating or selling?" Wait, though, something feels very weird with that statement.

"If everyone did that, our social structure society would fail," Dikez interjected, "You need a permit to hunt, a permit to sell meat, one to work it, to serve it. We registered for hunting for carapaces to sell to the market. How much we do of it depends on our abilities and the time we want to dedicate to it. However, even if we had all the permits, we would have to be careful not to upset the dungeon's environment. If we took out everything we wanted, not only would the dungeon take much more time to replenish it, we would essentially be flooding the market, lowering our own prices, it would quickly turn into a shit fest. To stabilize the economy, strict rules are in order, and we do all abide by them."

Great Wakan Tanka, this is society at its finest! Is this for real?

Gabriel could not answer the fundamental reality of it, shattering the very need for something like capitalism.

It's all around Mana, isn't it? But maybe this is the exception. They've essentially got free Mana with that invisible star thing, though it probably can't be used as currency only to generate what is essentially their private energy, still. Not only is this place rich, but it is also so fundamentally advanced at a societal level that it would make the best of Earth's politics… wander aimlessly in the streets. Or am I failing to see something? Guess with time, I might discover the ugly and the bad of this too.

***

In the Veins, a giant Elk tensed up at a piece of news delivered by a team of scryers.

Gaia Waterfront was there with him, witnessing the delivery.

"The giants? This is not good, and at Kanceldom on top of it… The Vairstrazz are still essentially in charge of things if I remember correctly."

"That doesn't change things; we need to retrieve the Herald. I doubt they will oppose us, even though... "Gaia sighed, "They will make things hard for us, right?"

"They might, yes. However... it might be an opportunity to fix my family's grudge with them."

Gaia and the Elk shared a look. The Starryskies, Nastia's family, name, taken by her father Clast, was not well received in Kanceldom after an incident regarding a Dragon that had seen The Seer of Carnage ending up in causing the death of the Vairstrazz's elder spouse.

She and the Elk were still working from the Foxhole. They were managing the search operations and directing them from there. They nodded among themselves in understanding. They might solve two problems at the same time.

"Call for Nastia's team. I need her right now!" Ordered the Elk.

"Yagais, sir, Nastia's team is not responding. The last time we heard from them was the day before yesterday," said one of the people from the communication team.

"What? Why weren't we informed of this?" He shouted back.

The informer started blabbering something, but Gaia covered it.

"If the Seer doesn't know of her daughter disappearing, then there's something serious or something which is being hidden from us, from me, Yagais," her look was of stern disapproval, "Is there something you would like to say to me?"

Gaia Waterfront was different from the usual girl. She could be scary when she got angry, nobody up in the Veins would notice, but the water from the Rapids of Mana started boiling, emanating dangerous Mana fumes in the air.

"Gaia Waterfront, are you doubting me? Your direct superior?" Said Yagais.

But she was adamant, "Then why has it been two days since we last saw Clast? Where is he if not running some covert operation for the Seer?" If her azure glowing eyes could say something, that phrase would be: 'son of a lying bitch!'

"You are overstepping your boundaries Gaia, and stop playing with the Rapids; it doesn't please the Yggdrasilians. Do you want us all evicted!?" He shouted.

"Don't change the topic!" She almost screamed back.

Then everything stopped, as Yggdrasil itself shook.

Slowly, the fumes which had reached up to the Foxhole started diminishing and dispersing in the air. Gaia looked out, a spectacle of an azure fog presenting itself at the Cradle's level. It expanded everywhere they could lay their eyes.

Yagais looked at her, scandalized.

She knew then, in her rage, she had really fucked up.

***

"And here we stand, an inn in the middle of fucking Kanceldom, home of the Giants! Home of the Dragon hunters! Entirely non-reliant on our Mana supply! We have no hold on them whatsoever, and where the hell did those two end up hiding!? Right here! Just what the fuck!" Nastia had been swearing for a while to the walls of the room of the inn they had booked.

"Doesn't she ever shut up? She wasn't this annoying when I was eight," said Darte Reevers.

"She was? I don't remember her ever being any fun," Fred answered.

The big man was polishing his armor while Nastia walked continuously paced through the room. Darte was instead sprawled on the divan, doing nothing really, but faking to do some form of homework.

The other three members of the party were in the adjacent room. Probably playing something fun.

"Surely funnier than everything we can do with Morticia here," said Darte.

"Who are you talking to," Fred asked, his tortoise's head, big as his kite shield, picked out of his back.

"I was talking with Death… of course," the panther materialized in mid-air and jumped right away on Fred's tortoise, which disappeared instantly back inside of Fred; he was left rolling on the floor with the Panther.

They were having fun. Catching a smile even from the little Darte.

Nastia didn't give half a fuck about them.

Darte sighed. Homework wasn't fun, even if he had sworn to his mother before she died that he would be doing Earth's regular courses. She loved Earth, don't know why, but she did, he thought.

It was then that a knock resounded on their door, Nastia flinched, but Darte already knew who it could be.

"Come in, Sato."

Sato picked out of the door. He was in his half-owl form. He loved looking like that. "You guys wanna play shoji?"

"Hell yeah!" Said Darte, getting up; Fred followed swiftly.

"Darte! We need to stay alert!" Said Nastia.

"They are in the dungeon Nastia, we need to wait for clearance. You ready to wage war with the giants out of a stupid dungeon permit? Cause I'm certainly not. So just relax. It would certainly help you out; eternal youth is good and all, but I bet it would be devastating to look like a pug on drugs for the rest of your life."

"What are you implying?" She asked, driven out of her stupor and touching the wrinkles on her forehead.

"Yup, that's more it. Now, come play shoji. I doubt anyone here knows you're the daughter of the one responsible for the death of their loyal Vairstrazz Dragon Hunter," Darte said, grinning, before heading out, Death disappearing inside of him.

Nastia sighed but soon joined them in the other room.

Man, it's gonna be one long night, Darte anticipated.