Telling the most powerful people at Apple Gate Farm about the dungeon was rather amusing. Especially when I began mentioning levels, with the Undead outside being between level sixteen and twenty, while the enemies inside ranged from twenty-two up to level twenty-eight for the last boss. Their faces twisted in such stunned disbelief that I had to send out a stealthy Observe to find out their levels, having to hide a grin when the most powerful of them was at level nineteen, the weakest a mere fourteen. Moments later, I felt an Observe pry at my secrets, only to swiftly swat it away with a surge of darkness magic, making sure that my secrets remained my own. I wasn’t sure if I would register as Firn Elf just yet, but I wasn’t taking a risk. If that secret was announced, it would be my own decision.

“Mark,” I addressed the leader of their fighting forces directly. He wasn’t the strongest, but he apparently had some prior training, though far less than Mrs Wu, and had the locals’ trust. “My team has secured some magical items from the Dungeon I mentioned. I believe handing them out gives some of your people a boost in strength, a boost that could very well be the difference between survival and death. We give those to you in good faith, I hope that the sentiment will be returned in the future.”

Sadly, I was unable to create magically binding contracts, nor would I want one that was so vague. For now, I was giving little that was of practical use for us, while hopefully earning vast amounts of goodwill, as goodwill and hope for future benefits were really all the people here could give us. Maybe some food, but given that my party consisted of a carnivore, an omnivore and a hemovore, or maybe that should be something else as her diet wasn’t so much blood as it was the magic therein, we really didn’t need all that much food that we couldn’t hunt for ourselves. Just the two pigs we had delivered to the farm today would be enough to feed us, and all the dogs we had recruited, for two, maybe three, days. No, the best we could hope for was good relations with these people, so that we’d be able to easily buy food once the preserved stuff ran out at some point. Until then, we could get by with the grains we had, some fruits and greens we could harvest outside and whatever livestock-turned-game we could hunt.

One by one, I handed the items we had found over, some of them were as bizarre as could be, and others were brutally straightforward. With each item, I could see the eyes of the people receiving them get wider and wider, they likely had a few ideas about just how valuable the things I was giving them were. Priceless, mostly because you needed a currency that had value to define a price. On Mundus, these items would be cheap, nothing that a journeyman couldn’t produce, some might even be at a level an apprentice could craft but here, where there was no tradition of magical crafting, where many old traditions and methods had been forgotten or replaced? Here and now, they were simply invaluable. And I was giving them away for little more than flowery words.

Soon, the items I could give away ran out, with about half of them still at our base, waiting for Mrs Wu and her people. I wasn’t about to put all our eggs into one basket and I felt a much stronger connection to Mrs Wu than to the people here, even if one of them was the mother of Lia’s body.

“Let’s get going,” I told Lia, happy to finally get away from people. While I liked teaching my students, that was less about them and much more about learning new magic or understanding my own magic better. If there was a way to teach without involving other people, I would happily do so, but sadly, the productive learning effect of teaching was tied to students asking questions and challenging their teacher, forcing them to thoroughly comprehend the material they were working with. But regular people, who wanted to talk with me about things other than magic? Those were something I wouldn’t miss at all, making the greatly reduced amount of such people the second biggest upside of the whole change. The biggest was obviously that I eventually would meet Sigmir again, not in a different world that I had thought to be an electronic dream but here, in my world.

Just as we were about to leave the primary building, the woman I had talked to last time intercepted us.

“Excuse me, Ms Jacobs, right?” she asked, looking straight at me. There was a brief moment of confusion but she quickly shook it off when I nodded, trying to remember her name. Luckily, she didn’t wait for an actual acknowledgement or greeting, instead, she simply continued, “We’ve seen some of those magicians in action, they told us that you taught them. Would you be willing to teach a few more people, we’ve gathered all who have an affinity trait. That nice young man, Kevin, explained some things to us but he insisted that you are far better at it, that he only repeated what he heard from you first.”

I managed to keep myself from sighing while considering the question. Given that the dungeon was locked to us, there was really nothing to do outside. I could do a few more experiments with the reagents we had found in the dungeon, maybe go around the fields and search for plants that were infused by magic during the change, there might be something worthwhile I could sniff out with my magic sense.

But it wasn’t really worth it. If I took an hour or three to teach these people, it would only strengthen my position, and maybe grant me some more EXP, something travelling outside would almost certainly fail to do. While the time I had used to train Lia had been enough of a pause to let the most powerful creatures in the area catch up with me, the dungeon had been enough to push me back ahead. Maybe, if we ventured into town, we might find some Scorched or advanced Shattered that would give me some EXP but it was unlikely.

“Well, I can spare some time for you. Do you have some space where we can discuss things quietly so that we don’t disturb the people who need to sleep? Alternatively, you could visit our current shelter tomorrow. We have decided to take over the Golden Cider Brewery, it has excellent facilities for those with our specific needs,” I explained, letting them make the decision. There was a part of me that wondered if telling them about our shelter was wise but at the end of the day, I wanted my students to keep learning, and the easiest way to accomplice that was by teaching them. Unless I wanted to visit them regularly, they needed to know where to go for their lessons.

“Do you know what happened to Scott, Melanie and their little ones? We haven’t seen them since that dreadful night. They might have found shelter elsewhere if they weren’t at home,” the woman asked, sounding concerned.

“Sadly, we do know. Two adults and two children were at home and did not make it through that night, we have since then buried them. Hopefully, they will find peace in whatever comes next,” I quietly explained, noticing a tear escape the corner of her eyes.

“So many didn’t make it,” she shook her head, eyes distant, before catching herself and focusing back on me. “If you don’t mind, we can gather outside. The weather is nice after all unless you want to be somewhere enclosed?”

“No, outside is fine. We might need a bench or something, somewhere you can sit. There are a few things I can do to help you learn that are better done in a stable position, so sitting, lying, or something like that. How many interested people are there?” I asked, after thinking about it for a moment. If my students didn’t mind, I certainly wouldn’t mind teaching outside. The night was blissfully clear and while the moon wasn’t full, standing under its light was incredibly soothing. I still didn’t know what the Blessing I had actually did, but I had a feeling that was exactly the intent behind it. Maybe one day I’d learn, but for now, I simply enjoyed the moonlight.

“There are five of us, well, six, but Zila is a little too young, at least in the eyes of her mother,” the woman shrugged and I began to wonder about the true number of affine people at the gym. I knew that Kevin and the others had shared my teaching with a few people, but had never inquired about the exact numbers. But if a group of about thirty people had six with an affinity trait, and a group of almost two hundred had only seven, there was something wonky. Or it was an incredible coincidence, but I didn’t think so.

As for the too-young person, I didn’t agree that anyone was too young to learn, certainly not with the current state of society. But at the same time, I wasn’t about to open that can of worms and teach some tyke magic against the explicit wishes of their parents. That seemed like an excellent way to alienate everyone here.