I headed home. It was Blaze’s turn to make dinner. Mine had been pre-empted yesterday by SandB’s pizza. I still had a couple days of work left on the math book, and that was just the first pass.
At least nothing else was hitting the proverbial fan right then. If it was, I didn’t want to know. The realization crept in that I was tired of being everyone’s go-to when something happened. There were other people now who could lead. Blaze. Ingrid and Bhaarrt, who led as a team. Even Shadow could do it. She’d already done it.
“The Goblin Camp.” I remembered. “And the stadium penetration, leading to taking out the man behind all the captive students.” I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more that I never heard of. They can all do most of what I do. “Except for maybe the shields, and Blaze can do most of those.”
That thought made me feel a little lighter, like someone had lifted another load off my shoulders. I made my decision as I pulled into my driveway and got out of the van. No more “mister do everything for everyone.” Barring guild things and helping with the spawns across the street, let them figure it out, just like almost everyone else around the world was doing.
Holding onto my new determination, I glanced down and saw the dungeon ring on my finger. A heavy sigh escaped me. Before I left the van and went into the house, I refilled the ring’s MANA. I’d agreed to that obligation, and fine...it could stay on the list.
As I walked into the house, before I even got my hat off, the Dungeon Avatar stood there in the middle of my living room. The air around it felt colder, stiller, like he brought the dungeon air with him to cool my house. I felt it watching me even though it had no eyes.
“Hi,” I called out, letting the door close behind me. “How are things in your dungeon?”
THE SECOND LEVEL IS PROGRESSING. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND SOME OF WHAT YOU PUT ON THE SQUARED PAPER.
“Squared paper?” I blurted out, then realized it meant graph paper. “What don’t you understand?”
I slowly took my gear off, hanging it on the coat rack, watching the Avatar out of the corner of my eye.
HOW DO YOU CONNECT THE UNCONNECTED SECTIONS. SHOULD NOT ALL BE CONTIGIOUS? THE TEACHING FAVORS THAT.
“Why should it?” I asked before thinking it through. The answer came almost immediately.
“Does the square footage of the dungeon matter for the energy needed to maintain it? I think it must for creating it. But once you have it built, and anything permanently on like torches, how much does it matter?”
I tried to picture the map layout. “Your dungeon was a very compact rectangle. It still had some areas that were just dirt. Not all the rectangle was dungeon or dungeon walls.”
The figure just stared at me while I finished putting things away or storing them back in my INVENTORY.
I waited, not knowing if it was thinking, being polite, reading its Teachings...or whatever passed for its thought processes. When I walked toward the kitchen for coffee, it rotated smoothly to keep looking at me.
I poured and sweetened a mug, then stuck it in the microwave. The smell of reheated coffee wasn’t as rich as fresh brewed, but it was close enough, warm and comforting after the day I’d had. The microwave dinged, sharp and hollow in the quiet house.
The Avatar stood exactly where I’d left it as I headed for my office. Deciding not to try to out-stubborn it, I set my mug on the warmer on my desk, sat down, and activated the screen. The document waited for me, full of dense academic text.
After a few minutes reviewing the last section, I was ready to start working again. I glanced toward the door where the Avatar had been standing.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
It was gone.
Shrugging, I continued my work. I couldn’t say I understood everything...but I was up to about one-quarter of it, not including the equations. I could follow most academic speak, but the deeper I got into the theory, the more it felt like it made sense. The author explained things at both macro and micro levels. I grasped parts of the macro...not enough, but bits here and there.
I didn’t need to fully understand it. My job was to get it ready for academic publication. Or more likely, help him make more money off his students when he required them to buy it for his class. I didn’t want to guess how much he would charge, especially since the print run might only reach a couple thousand.
Eventually, I heard Blaze come home. The front door thumped shut, then I heard bags or containers set on the kitchen counter. Her footsteps padded toward the office before she wandered in and sat at the desk behind me. She’d started using it for her reports instead of the kitchen table or her laptop on her stomach while she lay on the couch, like she had the first few days she stayed here.
“How did things go today?” she asked when she saw me pause. “Ingrid said they were doing medical tests on you?”
I turned my chair around to face her, smiling, happy she was back.
“Not too bad. Everyone agreed that I had a brain,” I said, aiming the line to end just as she took a drink. I mistimed it by a second, but she laughed anyway.
“We know that. Did they find anything left over from the cultivation experiment?”
“No. In fact, we duplicated it for half the time. Ingrid brought out her Priestess of Odin gear and threatened them with a one-handed axe if they didn’t end it at 15 minutes.”
Blaze laughed. “I’m certain no one would try to face her down with all that on. That sounds like most of what she had on at the quarry the other night. Without the spear.”
I nodded.
“I got into the cycle state, but it was easier to come out of this time. Maybe it was the shorter duration...or maybe I was more accustomed to doing it. I still couldn’t break out on my own,” I admitted.
“Don’t know if you should practice until you can, or let it go.”
“I don’t know either. I promised I wouldn’t do it again without her watching me. I’ll stick to that promise.”
“I’ll help you do that. It’s my night to cook, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Sho is. What kind of grub you fixen tonight?” I asked in a fake cowboy drawl.
“Don’t know, pardner,” she said in an equally bad accent. “But I’ll rustle somethin’ up, ya betcha.”
We both laughed, and I returned to editing while she headed to her room, then the kitchen. The sound of cabinet doors and the faint scent of spices and garlic soon drifted across the house from the kitchen.
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [You want to do another run in the morning. My son is begging me to get you to take us on another one. He was bragging to all his friends, online and off, that he was out with you this morning and leveled up.]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [Doesn’t surprise me. I can do another one. Ask HealBot if they want to heal it. They should get at least another level or two out of it. After that it slows down.]
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [I’ve seen the numbers on it. The net’s full of it and most of their math is right. Better than I expected.]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [Right. I passed some of my questions to the GRA people this morning. Fed them some BS math questions too, and they ate it up.]
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [Are you where that came from? I got some questions after my afternoon class that sounded like what we talked about.]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [What did you tell them?]
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [That I’m already studying it and working with the top minds in the field.]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [Top minds, eh? Maybe you should contact Dr. Lehrerson and get his opinion on it?]
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [I thought about it. Seriously. I looked him up and I know someone who should know him.]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [Go ahead and ask. Tell him some math student brought up the question and he was recommended as an expert on the subject. Given the people working on this, shouldn’t be too hard to believe.]
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [I’ll see. What time tomorrow?]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [9am spawn time is good for me. If we get in the area 15 minutes before spawn time, they don’t roam as far.
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [OK. We’ll be at your place about 8:15 then in the morning.]
[William of Brinsford:] [MathMamm] [Sounds good. Let me know what you find on the math of this. And other game stuff too.]
[MathMamm:] [William of Brinsford] [Will do.]
That took care of that. I still didn’t have an answer, but people were working on it.
Lobachevsky? Where do you think that line of inquiry will go? We may not find out for a few days of story time. Maybe that will give the dungeon time to finish the second floor? Like a good meal, it will be ready when it's ready. Until then, we continue with our usual cast of characters.
https://patreon.com/u11681285 15 Chapters Ahead
