Ten minutes of silent rowing later, the boat finally reached the shore and everyone disembarked.

  As expected, there had been some staring and whispering, but Miles didn’t let that bother him and instead, he distracted both himself and the new delvers with an impromptu butchering and preserving lesson, which lasted for close to thirty minutes. He showed a few tricks to cut and preserve the giant eel, provided them with some salt—of which he had plenty—and suggested a couple of recipes before finally, he wished them good luck and slipped away.

  While they were still shaken from their encounter with the eels and his demonstration, he felt that soon the questions might start, and well, he’d already spent enough time socializing. It was time to get going. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep an eye on them. They were a decent bunch and who knew, maybe he’d have some jobs for them in the future.

  Disappearing into the tunnel ahead, Miles sped up, activating his body enhancement Skill at a modest 30% and to kill the time, he tweaked the amount of mana he funneled into the Skill, increasing it by a few percents before lowering it by a couple of points. He just used the monotonous run to grow more familiar with his ability while the tunnels and ruins blurred around him, and a few hours later, he found the first recognizable landmark, a post made of metal that had been driven into the soil.

  He was almost there.

  Looking around, he found the expected engraved words into the wall and with that, he had directions toward the floor’s waystation, the city that grew near the stairways that would lead delvers to the lower floors—or to the platform that’d send delvers back to the surface.

  So Miles got back to running, and after a while, the tunnel—now much better maintained and lit—opened up into a gigantic cave that tilted downward, and whose ceiling glittered like a bright night’s sky that bathed the air in eerie dark blues and purples. In its center, close to the edge of the chasm that would lead him down, a small stretch was lit up by bright, warm light poles, contrasting with the darker hues of the cave. A street was highlighted and even from afar, Miles could see the small crowd surrounding the city walls, tending to their makeshift stands and using the outside space as some sort of open-aired market.

  Up on the wall, sentries were watching for dangers. Specifically, monsters too dumb to realize that these many delvers hanging out together only meant that it’d end up being served in a soup or hung to be sold as provisions for those about to delve deeper in the Dungeon. Still, the alarm and vigilance was necessary, as not everyone was equipped to handle monsters.

  Miles passed through the crowd without paying them too much mind. This area catered to new delvers mostly, so there wouldn’t be much for him aside from a tavern with a room—in which he’d test the Custodial Key—before he’d head straight down to the third floor.

  Unless the Custodial Key works and it connects me back to the surface… which would definitely be something, he thought as he eyed a merchant selling an assortment of protective charms.

  Entering the city went through without a hitch, with Miles flashing his new ID before being let through the gates, at which point the waystation-city spread out ahead of him, and before realizing it, he found himself pressing his lips in a line.

  He hadn’t missed this place.

  Bright, hung lanterns framed the wide street that cut through the settlement, chasing away the permanent gloomy blues of the cave while all around him, businesses used similar but smaller light to highlight their signage and offerings. Some were pretty extravagant, using bright colors and imagery while some—like the guilds—kept their signage pretty modest. Miles just walked down the street, head on a swivel for a spot he could get a room in.

  It wasn’t that anything particularly bad had happened here, but it was one of the spots he strongly associated with his early struggles. Back then, his loops were not that long. They were a handful of days at most. Maybe it had been his low-tier core or maybe it had been his spirit, but whatever the cause had been, it meant that he didn’t get a lot of rest and recovery between his deaths and at that point, he had no storage that could transcend the loop. Hell, he didn’t even know how the loops worked exactly. He didn’t know he could cancel and reset the returning point, which ended up with him constantly being yanked back through time every few days, with nothing but some barely usable memories. Unless he died.

  Suffice it to say, it hadn’t been fun, and getting much of anything done was hard. Plus, it didn’t help that he hadn’t had much to work with when it came to Skills. [Enhanced Strength] and [Enlarged Storage] opened a few avenues for him, but they had their limitations.

  The scent of something roasting made him pause in front of a well lit and seemingly clean tavern, and so he shrugged and walked in. One thing was for sure though. He was not the same person who had roamed these streets decades ago, searching for opportunities and haggling over the prices of whatever he managed to hunt.

  At first look, the tavern was pretty clean and while he attracted a few stares, everyone soon went back to their drink. A quick chat with the barkeep ended up with him getting a room and as he climbed up the stairs, he hummed. He was pretty sure he’d been around this particular spot before, but he couldn’t recall much and soon enough, he reached his room.

  Closing the door behind him, Miles summoned the key. By some luck, the largest room of the establishment was free, and it came with a living space equipped with a cozy chimney, a washroom, and a separate bathroom. Plenty of doors for him to use the key on. So with a bowl of soup from below still in hand, he roamed about for a few seconds, then stopping in front of the bedroom door, he pressed the key to the simple wood and watched it sink through.

  His eyes widened. The key was activating?

  The wood rippled and changed. The gap between planks was sealed shut, while the door frame grew thicker. There hadn’t been that many blemishes on the door, but they all quickly disappeared and a moment later, the transformation was done, and Miles reached for the handle. He twisted, and pulled.

  The Custodial Room stretched ahead of his sight, its sky colored with deep blues, bronze as a new day’s sun prepared to rise over the east.

  “Oh this is…big,” he mumbled as his brain tried to catch up with what this implied though before his thoughts could run wild, he put his soup on a nearby table and stepped forward. Better to know everything all at once rather than take in the details piecemeal.

  His feet hit the familiar grass, and with a deep breath, he inhaled the cool night air. It certainly didn’t smell the same as the room in which he’d been. But the mana…

  “You’re already back?”

  The familiar voice made him turn right, which was when he found the tall form of Hazel peering down at him, brows raised. She glanced past him at the door, and a calculating look flashed in her gaze.

  “Testing something,” he said as he stretched his awareness around, sensing the mana of the room. He couldn’t tell exactly by how much it had changed, but he could definitely tell it was the same as in the room he had just left.

  “I see that,” Hazel simply said, gaze still set on the doorway. “As for your other… test, we were right. The mana changed. Nearly 12 hours ago.”

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  “Good, good,” he distractedly said, staring back at the door that would lead him back to the room on the second floor. That was great news. There was massive potential there. But having access to the Custodial room from any floor? That was a new variable he hadn’t been seriously expecting and apparently, he wasn’t the only one reeling from the news.

  Meeting Hazel’s eyes, both stared at each other, half-distracted as they digested this new variable, then Miles shook his head and chuckled, and Hazel sighed. “So now you’re just going to ignore the Dungeon’s rules, eh? I gotta say, whatever’s going on with these Custodial abilities and whatever reason you’re being given them, I can’t say that I regret agreeing to work for ya. This is…”

  Hazel trailed off, eyes almost glittering at the rules his Skills kept breaking, and he had to agree. There must be a reason he was being given these insanely disruptive abilities though while he had searched for an answer before, he hadn’t found any yet. But maybe that would change soon?

  Miles shook his head. He’d figure that out eventually. But just the access to the Custodial room wasn’t all. There was something else at play that had to be addressed. “I still have a loop active,” he said, retrieving his soup and swirling it about as he thought. “And if I’m not wrong, that’s the ghostly gate to the hotel room in Rivergate,” he added, nodding past her at the echo of the door.

  Hazel’s brows lifted. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying there are more answers to be had, right now.”

  Closing the gate to the tavern of the second floor behind him, he resummoned the key and stepped toward the ghostly door that would take him back to the surface. To the hotel room he had rented before going on this delve. Hazel trailed after him, quietly watching, and he slotted in the key, then swung the door open, and the room stretched ahead of him through the wardrobe’s door.

  Then he felt it.

  The threads linking him to the [Respawn Protocol] he had set on the 1st floor were straining. He could feel them tugging at his body and soul, and he knew that if he stepped out of the Custodial room and into the surface, they would sever, which meant that the loop would break.

  It also meant that the loop was still active while he was in the Custodial room.

  “Are you not stepping through?”

  Miles chewed on his lips for a second, then shook his head. “Not right now. I’m barely minutes away from getting into the Shattered Depths, and I want to lock that in at least before I end the delve. But this gives me ideas. I think… As soon as the key changes, I’ll come back and we’ll test what happens when I step in there,” he said, waving toward the Rivergate hotel, before he shut the door. “But before that, we got a couple more things to check.”

  First, Miles summoned the platform and the stele he used to get into the Dungeon and pretty quickly, he noticed the second notch that had appeared at the top. So when the key had done that thing where it shone and flaked off when he had arrived on the second floor, that change was also marked here. He wasn’t sure if it had any other function beyond tracking the depth he had reached and improve the ambient mana, but he’d figure that out soon enough. Next, he scrounged into his storage and pulled two random old scrolls. He placed one down on the grass of the Custodial room, in front of the tavern’s doorway, which he activated once more before stepping through. Back in the humid air of the tavern, he put the second piece of paper down on the desk before stepping back. Miles took a minute to close his eyes and focus, then he reset his [Respawn Protocol] to this specific place and time.

  It was a little straining of a process. He had to locate the threads that tied him to the previous respawn point, then, for a lack of a better word, drag them to here and now. He had to keep at it until the Skill relented and until this specific moment became the recall point.

  He could also have completely disconnected the loop and started a new one, but that would have taken him much longer. There was a cooldown between the end of a loop and the activation of a new one. But modifying was different.

  So he began coaxing the threads, pulling on them through the Skill that orbited his core, burning through his mental energy and mana as he did. The process only took minutes but when he opened his eyes, sweat was beading down his brow, and already, he felt tired. But that might be nothing compared to what came next.

  “Not gonna have to do this all the time,” he told himself. The sooner he learned how the Custodial room behaved, the more efficient he’d be while using it.

  With the new anchor of the loop set, he tore the scroll in the tavern, then looked up at the witch who was watching him. “Mind tearing that one?”

  She peered down at the scroll he’d just torn, then down at the one at her feet. With a twitch of her finger, a thin, thorny root peeked out of the ground, wrapped around the scroll, then wrenched, leaving the half-buried and torn scroll where it used to be.

  “I’m taking it that you’ve been resting well,” he said, still gazing down at the scroll for a second before giving the witch a sidelong glance. She had been content to watch in silence, eyes shining as she took everything in.

  “Never been better,” she said, looking down at the nail of her once missing arm. “It does help that there’s more mana to work with.”

  “Glad my hard work’s making you comfortable,” he teased and in response, she grinned. Then nodding, she looked past him at the doorway. “If I forget about this little experiment, then make sure you tell me. This is important.”

  Of course, Miles had no intention on hiding any of the mechanics. Especially considering she had helped him uncover some of the tricks of his Skills in the past.

  “Obviously. See you in a minute, Hazel” he said. And with that, he swung the door shut, then taking a deep breath, he sat down and closed his eyes. He took a couple more breaths, braced mentally, then triggered the recall function of [Respawn Protocol]. Unlike his early days, he didn’t need to die to send himself back, and considering only a minute or so had passed, the process was pretty quick.

  But it still didn’t feel great.

  The threads that had been holding him suddenly tugged at his heart and spirit, making him wince for a second before they began wrapping around him. His thoughts grew fuzzy and slow, and the sounds of the tavern below faded into nothing as he began floating in darkness, his whole existence being cocooned and dragged through mind-bending darkness. Miles held on to his sense of self, and focused his whole being on the wisps of mana he could sense burn within him. Getting distracted here could end up with him starting the loop unconscious, so he didn’t let himself lapse. In that focus, he couldn’t tell how long it had been. It could have been seconds, or minutes, or even more. It was hard to tell when he was in this—state. Or place. But soon enough, he felt the humid air and sound of shouting patrons below him, and cracking his eyes open, Miles found himself lying on his back in the tavern room he had rented.

  A groan escaped his throat as his vision swam, and slowly, so he wouldn’t trigger the nausea that often accompanied the activation of [Respawn Protocol], he rose to his feet and gently stretched his back.

  “Glad to see this still sucks,” he grumbled. Reaching into his storage, he grabbed some water as he made his way to the scroll he had previously torn and found it perfectly fine. Intact. Just like the moment he had put it down. Next, he pulled the key out of his soul and stepped into the Custodial room again, only to find Hazel, sitting cross-legged in front of the torn scroll.

  “You look like shit,” she said after a quiet beat.

  Miles pressed his lips together. “Gee, thanks,” he retorted, eyes scanning for the second scroll. “How’s the—”

  He found it. It was still embedded in the soil, torn by the thorny root Hazel had used.

  “So this means…the room is persisting between loops. Like your storage,” Hazel succinctly summarized.

  The two shared a look for a few seconds, then she nodded slowly as he blew out his cheeks.

  “This is…” she trailed off, staring down at the torn scroll. She stared at it for a moment, shaking her head, then she just started chuckling, and Miles found himself smiling, though there was no doubt his apprehension could show, no matter how exciting the possibilities might be.

  This would certainly have some implications. The Custodial room was capable of persisting through the loops, which meant that technically, years could take place in this space while only weeks would pass in the Dungeon. He basically had his own time compression chamber. And compared to what some Great Houses and Great Guilds were hogging and keeping secret, he just blew theirs out of the water.

  Now, what was he to do with this?