Somehow, it never got old. Every time we quietly approached Apple Gate Farm, using the cover of the night to avoid the ghastly sunlight, the guards let out frightened noises, either squeaks, squeals or even outright screams. Lia had suggested to actually try sneaking up on them, just to see how close we could get, maybe poke them from, or into their, behind, with points given for proximity, how loud the resulting scream was and a few other factors that could be taken into account. It was a rather amusing idea, but for now, I hadn’t agreed on it, the guards might take offence if we played such tricks on them.

“Do you want to visit with Kira first?” I asked Lia, knowing about her somewhat twisted emotions in regard to the woman. In her memories, Kira was a loving presence and intellectually, Lia knew that Chantalle, the person she once was, had loved her mother. But while they shared their memories and Carnelia’s body was transformed using Chantalle’s body as the base, they were not the same person. I wasn’t quite sure how to empathise with her, with either of them, but I did my best to give Lia an anchor, somebody to relate to and relay her feelings to. That I, myself, struggled with emotions made things a little difficult, but we had talked about our respective struggles, though given that those talks had mostly taken place while resting after a particularly hard battle, it might not have been in the best atmosphere. But it had worked, at least to a point.

“Why don’t we put the meat away first? I’m sure she’ll find us at some point,” Lia suggested and I simply nodded, changing course to walk towards the butcher’s shed I had been guided to last time. As we moved, I noticed that there were a couple of tents set up near the main building, making me wonder what was going on.

There weren’t many people around, but I noticed that there were more than there had been before. Not many more, but some, and most of those, I actually recognised. There were people from the gym here, and when I realised that and begin to sniff the air, looking for trace amounts of magic, I could tell that I wasn’t the only spellcaster around.

“It seems like my other students are around, at least some of them,” I mused, sniffing the air again. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought the scent I had picked up spoke of Earth-Magic, with some Nature mixed in.

So at least two of my students, unless they had managed to branch out from their initial affinity. I doubted it, neither Sandy nor Aiko had given me the impression that their interest was in the elemental aspect of nature, Sandy had been more interested in plants, while Aiko had felt drawn to the synergy between the animalistic parts of her Nature-Magic and her Flesh-Magic. To use old terms that might just come back, one a budding Druid, the other possibly a beast tamer. Or maybe going down a darker path and not only taming and healing beasts but also enhancing them in ways nature wouldn’t quite agree with. Time would tell, and I thought it would be quite interesting what paths my students would eventually explore.

Looking at the other possible candidate, a cross-branching didn’t become much more likely. Leon had looked at his Earth Magic as an extension of his engineering ability, to the point that he had partially shunned my lessons and focused on his own explorations. I couldn’t wait what he had learned, and what I might learn from him. Hopefully, he had managed to find his footing and turn his magic affinity into something big, otherwise, I would be a little disappointed at the waste.

“It will be good to see the others,” Lia admitted, a faint smile on her face. She had met them before we moved over here, with somewhat mixed results. There had been a bit of fear, some confusion and a lot of questions, but ultimately, they had accepted that Lia’s creation had been a fluke, a stroke of chance and miracle, not something I could recreate. It hadn’t stopped Aiko, if anything it had spurred her on, but I doubted she was anywhere close to experimenting. And if she got to that point, I was looking forward to watching her progress and maybe learning something myself. There was simply far too much about magic that I didn’t know yet and far too little time. If my disciples managed to find out something new and taught it to me, gave me a different perspective, I would count it as a win for me. After all, it had worked splendidly with science, countless people, working all around the world and exchanging ideas, their combined efforts culminating in the advance of all who could take part.

Maybe that was something I should invest some time and effort in, to cultivate a certain mindset of exchange and sharing. If I made sure that my disciples were accustomed to sharing their work with me, they’d keep doing so. And if I had to share some of my knowledge, maybe even some of the items we had acquired in the Dark Slaughterhouse, to get that process started, it would pay off in the long run.

“Miss Jacobs,” It was Kevin’s voice that broke me out of my reverie, a voice I hadn’t expected. As always, he used a form of address as if I was a school teacher and he the pupil just happy to attend lessons, regardless of the fact that we were walking across a dark farmyard, carrying a dead pig, in the middle of the apocalypse. Maybe the familiar form of address helped him to compartmentalise, to shield this part of his life from the horrorshow that was reality.

“You are looking rather pale,” he looked at me with a frown on his face, as if trying to figure out what was going on.

“Hello Kevin,” I greeted him, while Lia exchanged her own greeting with him. “Just a small side-effect of everything, nothing to be concerned about. What has been going on around the gym?”

For a moment, it looked like he was about to ask another question, but as I simply continued to walk, it looked like he decided not to bother. They had repeatedly tried to ask about Lia and who, what or why she was, and never received an answer other than it being nothing to be concerned about. Hopefully, my students had learned that lesson.

“The stench became seriously bad, Mrs Wu had people start moving over here. I was part of the second group coming over here,” he explained, causing me to nod. It was to be expected, the city must be drowned out in the stench of the dead, the last few days had been relatively warm so the previously slowed decomposition would start catching up.

“Who else is here? We set up nearby if you are interested in more lessons,” I offered him, getting an enthusiastic nod in return.

“Sandy and Leon came over with the first real group,” he replied, causing me to nod. No wonder I had been smelling their magic, and the selection made sense. Sandy would eventually be able to boost crop yields, possibly the most important magical ability on a macro scale, and Leon would soon be able to raise buildings with nothing but his magic. Maybe not the most comfortable buildings, it would be little more than the equivalent of concrete shells, but without modern equipment, it would be the best anyone could ask for. There might be a few people who had read about medieval construction techniques, but I doubted anyone could easily apply those.

“Interesting. We’ve discovered something that might be worth your while, at least once you gained some more strength, maybe found an ally or two,” I began, getting a curious look in return. “It seems that our reality has become even more like a video-game than we previously thought. Maybe silly of me, not to expect that our world would become fundamentally like Mundus, the world I’ve explored in Road to Purgatory, but maybe I simply failed to suspend my disbelief enough,” I shrugged, a part of me still unable to comprehend the how and why of instanced dungeons. It was powerful magic that simply sprung into existence, while somehow mirroring what used to be at the location, at least that was my current hypothesis. It felt nonsensical, and yet, it was real.

“Doesn’t that sound ominous?” Kevin quietly snarked, making me chuckle.

“Not necessarily, no. You see, we came across a dungeon. And not just a normal, underground dwelling with a few monsters that moved in, but an actual, instanced dungeon, separate from the surrounding reality, at least as far as I can tell,” I grinned when his eyes started to bug out. Kevin wasn’t the most intellectual of my students, his magic more driven by his curiosity and instinct, but even he knew enough to realise just how insane that idea was.

“How?!” he gasped out, staring with pure disbelief.

“Excellent question, I’ve got no idea. My guess is that somehow, the sheer amount of Death that occurred there left a stain on reality, so to speak. With the coming of the Astral River, that stain filtered into the River and turned into something else. Namely, a dungeon filled with undead, possibly reflecting the strongest emotions directed at the location,” I explained, his incomprehension not completely fading until it suddenly got replaced with a look of pure horror.

“Sheer amount of death, you say? Like, the death of an entire city, of an entire world?!” his voice strained from fear as he put together what I had been afraid of for some time.

“Possibly, yes. I doubted the entire world will turn into a dungeon, but I could see the city turn into an open dungeon, there has been precedent for such on Mundus,” I admitted, only now remembering the tales the Grandmother and Dura Firebringer had told me about that city of the Death. I didn’t remember its name, but that might be what our hometown would become.