Cora led the Tollivers to a new room her friend and Guardian had constructed not three hours before. About an hour after he had dug out three new rooms. Which in turn had happened about two hours after he had barged into her chamber, woken her from a dead sleep, and demanded to know if she had any insight into time dilation.

She had not.

This body was a curious thing. She knew she had had one in the past eons—though she did not recall its exact nature. But she was relatively certain it was of an immortal cast, and had needed neither sleep nor sustenance. This body, despite being a golem subtype, needed both, and being awakened at two in the bloody morning was a very rude surprise and a most unpleasant experience.

“How long has he been going,” Annie Tolliver asked as they made their way through the tunnels.

“At least six hours,” Cora replied. “I am sorry, I tried to get him to take a break and sleep, but—“

“But our son is categorically unable to process good advice when he is like this,” Jackson Tolliver said, chuckling. “We understand, Cora.”

How very odd. Their reassurance, despite not having seen the state Sam was in, did indeed make her feel somewhat better and calm her nervousness.

And that was another thing she was unfamiliar with, wasn’t it? Nervousness, fear—Well. All the emotions, really. When she had been in her orb form, meshed with the Ruby Core from the Tollivers previous business, she had been comfortably numb to emotions of all kinds. Except towards the end, where she’d started feeling them again.

And now in this new body, they were coming back even quicker. She had not yet decided if that was a good thing or not.

“You… Have seen this before?” she asked as they turned down the final tunnel. At the end, behind a heavy iron door, could be heard the sounds of hammerblows and other tool noises.

“Oh yes,” Annie Tolliver said with a little smile. “Many times.”

“And you know how to fix it? Is it a status effect?”

“No,” Jackson Tolliver rumbled. “It is a Sam effect.”

Cora blinked. “What?”

“Our son is a very intelligent young man,” said Annie Tolliver. “And he can sometimes enter into… Call it a fugue state, where the ideas in his brain overwhelm him and demand all his focus. It is a trait shared by many creatives, as I understand it.”

“Gets worse when he has coffee,” Jackson Tolliver added thoughtfully. “We should check and make sure there’s some good de-caf handy.”

They reached the end of the tunnel, and Annie Tolliver took it on herself to open the door. Inside was what Cora’s eyes identified as an Artisan’s Workshop, a mid-tier support room that held a variety of tools and was the stepping stone to high-tier constructions.

She stepped through the door, then froze, hand still on the handle. Her eyes went wide as information flowed into her, and her mouth dropped open.

This room was different from the ones she had seen before.

Which was impossible.

The room was long and wide, with racks of tools and raw materials stacked against the walls, and a dozen workbenches laid out in an efficient pattern in the center. Stations for different types of construction were scattered here and there; forge, woodworking, metal working, leather and cloth, even a jeweler’s station for small works.

All those were standard. Though Cora had no specific memories of this room, she knew how it was supposed to be and feel simply from her automated subroutines. But those same subroutines were now telling her that this room, this specific room, was somehow different.

Perhaps it was the new workbench in the middle of the room. The one in front of which stood Samuel, grinning like a loon. The one that was glowing with an eldritch light, and above which spun a strange series of lights that almost looked like the precursor to an interdimensional portal.

Perhaps.

“Uh, Sammy?” Annie Tolliver said, stepping past Cora and into the impossible room. “Whatcha got going there, love?”

“Huh?” Sam blinked and looked up from where he was doing something with a strange tool—one he’d gotten from his powerful magic toolbox, most likely. “Oh, hey guys. Didn’t hear you come in. Be with you in a second.”

Cora noticed a pair of healer mobs off to the side, looking exhausted, sitting or leaning against various inert pieces of equipment. Jackson Tolliver swerved aside and headed for them, and began to engage them in conversation too quiet for Cora to hear.

But she wasn’t paying attention to them anyway. Her eyes were locked on the new workstation. The impossible work station.

“Sam,” she said as she and Annie drew closer to her friend. “What is this? What did you do? How did you do it?”

“Oh, I just—“ He stopped. She some him visibly control himself and prevent himself from speaking.

“I can’t say,” he said finally, then muttered something under his breath and turned back to the workbench. “Not yet. Soon, though, I think. They made this stuff complicated, but not really complex. Once you understand the theory…”

Cora blinked hard and shot a worried glance at Annie Tolliver. The woman was frowning and looking at her son with what Cora could only call a critical eye.

“Can’t say, can you?” she asked. “And why might that be?”

“Can’t say that either,” Sam said, putting a tool back in the toolbox and withdrawing another, far more complex one. “Soon though, assuming I don’t crash before I get this finished.”

“And can you tell me what you’re building?”

Sam blinked and looked up—Cora had to fight to not recoil in fright. His eyes were glowing, bright yellow and almost blinding. Those glowing eyes narrowed in thought, and he gave a jerky nod.

“Yeah. Yeah I can. It’s a portal. Well, it’s actually a ‘multi-dimensional mana-driven teleportation matrix’.”

“I read about it in last month’s ‘Mana Designs Monthly,” A high-pitched child’s voice came from a corner of the room, and Cora turned to see Rashun hurrying towards Sam carrying an armload of metal blanks suitable for etching on. “Big bro was gonna use just a regular old two-way portal, but I told him he should totally make something cooler than that.”

“How did you make that?” Cora demanded. “This room does not have the facilities for that! You need—“

“A tier-five Dimensional Workshop,” Sam said, nodding. “I know. But I didn’t have enough resources for that. And I really only needed the one piece from it. So I—“ he stopped again and glanced upwards. Frowned in thought, then shook his head. “No, if they monitored for this stuff, I’d already be caught. Should be safe. I hope.”

Cora exchanged looks with Annie Tolliver again. Worried, this time. Her guardian was not sounding at all like his normal self.

“Sorry,” he said as if reading her mind. “I know. Not making sense. Okay look, I have a skill, took it a few levels ago, that lets me… Alter things. In the world. Rooms, skills, classes—“

“What?” That was Annie Tolliver, wide-eyed and staring. “Sam—“

“No, wait,” Sam held up his hand, cutting his mother off. “Let me finish. It’ll be easier. Trust me.”

Cora heard Annie mutter something about a spatula under her breath, but the woman subsided.

“Thanks.” Sam nodded and sucked in a breath. “Okay, so, some things have happened in the past day or so that… I can’t talk about. Not here. But there’s a place I can talk about them, if I can get there. The problem is, I don’t think anyone can get to them as long as they’re tied to the system. Not really. Except… Cora, remember that ‘freed unique mob’ thing I told you about?”

Cora nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

“Right. So. I’m pretty sure that means I’m not connected to the system anymore. Not like other people are. Don’t ask me how I know, that’s one of the things I can’t talk about—“

“The golem,” Cora blurted, then slapped a hand across her mouth, her metallic cheeks heating up. “Sorry.”

“No,” Sam jabbed a finger at her in triumph. “That’s it exactly.”

Sam’s mother looked back and forth between them, confusion writ large on her face. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Remember the tutorial golem? The first time I beat it? I assume you guys were watching that,” Sam said. “The voice that came after it died?”

“Vaguely,” she was frowning now. Then she blinked. “When it said it couldn’t talk because—“

Because the system is everywhere, and listening. Cora remembered the words as clear as day. And a few very large pieces dropped into place about what was going on here.

“Right. So. I know there’s a way to get there. And I think I can open it, I just…” He waved a hand at the impossible work bench. “I needed the right tools to open the connection. And I think I’ve got that now.”

“I helped!” Rashun piped up, grinning wide and proud.

“Right. So thanks to the workbench,” he patted the glowing station with the swirling energies above it, “I think I can establish a link to the… The place. And—“

“Have you taken classes I don’t know about?” Jackson Tolliver said, coming forward with the healers. “That sounds like advanced-tier magic, to me.”

“It’s… Because of the skill I mentioned,” Sam said, looking a little hesitant. “It lets me see how things are connected, how they work… It’s why I’ve been going like crazy for the last few hours.”

“Eight and a half,” Cora said.

Sam blinked. “That long? Damn. The crash from this is gonna be a gold-plated bastard.”

“Hence, our worried expressions,” Jackson Tolliver said, arching the eyebrow above his patch. His patchbrow? Yes. “Want to speed it up?”

“Right. Right. Okay, so, I can see things. How they fit together. How they can be manipulated. And so I found out that this,” he jabbed a finger at the energy confluence, “can be used in a very specific way to join to already existing dimensional spaces. There’s… Just one problem.”

“Hey Butter-boy.” Sally’s voice made everyone turn as the orb floated into the room. “Nice digs. Are you aware your vital signs tell me you’re about to completely stroke out?”

Cora blinked. “You can read his vitals?”

“It’s a combat-core thing. Helps keep tabs on the Guardian when he goes into combat.”

“Sally, perfect.” Sam stepped away from the coruscating energy field. “I was just about to call you. You’re exactly who I need to see.”

Sally stopped in the doorway and rotated left and right, taking in the scene.

“Y’know, I’ve had nightmares that start this way. What’s going on?”

“This nexus will link up to… A place,” Sam said, shooting another glare at the sky. “A place where we can talk without the system listening in. But in order to get there, I have to know how to connect it. And in order to know that, I have to see how the connection is made. Like… Uh…” He blinked twice and seemed to wobble a bit. “Rashun, help me out here. I just lost my words.”

“He needs an address,” the kobold child piped up in his high tenor, hopping up onto an unused worktable so he was at eye-level with the others. “Like when you send a package to someone on the other side of the world, you need to know where to send it so it gets there, right? The theory here is the same. If big bro wants to travel to the other side of the universe, he needs to know the address of the place he’s trying to get.”

“Right. That.” Sam pointed at Rashun in acknowledgment. “And that’s the problem I’ve got right now. Because if I can make the trip, I can use the skill I have to look at the connection on the way and figure out the… The address.”

“But you can’t make the trip without the address, and you can’t get the address without making the trip,” Jackson Tolliver rumbled. “That’s a problem.”

“Except I don’t have to get back to that specific address,” Sam said, “just a similar address, that gives me everything I need. And—“

“And he’s been to a place like that before,” Rashun broke in excitedly. “A bunch of times! Like when he died in the White Room, or when he died after bonding to you, miss Sally. Or when he died—“

“Yeah, right,” Sam coughed. “What the kid is trying to say is, it’s the Anomalies. I need to get to one of those, because they’re all outside the system—or at least, they have been up until now and I figure they’re my best chance to get what I need.”

Cora was frowning now. It made a kind of sense—especially if her Guardian wasn’t fabricating that new skill he was talking about. He’d mentioned it to her before, but never the depths of what it could do. The connotations of that were rather… Frightening.

But…

“I thought you were only transported to Anomalies at very specific instances, Sam,” she said. “The deaths that the System couldn’t accomodate, or other oddities.”

“Like bonding to a core that shouldn’t exist.” Sam nodded, looking now at Sally. “That caused an Anomaly. In fact, it’s the one thing I know caused an anomaly that also happens to be repeatable.”

Sally, who had been looking back and forth between Cora and Sam, went stock-still.

“Are you seriously going to ask what I think you’re going to ask, Butter-boy?”

Our sister, Cora realized in a flash. He needs—

“The third core,” Sam said, quiet but firm. “Sally, it’s time I met your sister.”