“Each colony became accustomed to planting new settlements and to claiming new boundaries.”

  -Albert Bushnell Hart

  ==Zidaun==

  I had expected to gain a considerable amount, though the exact details were a surprise.

  The dungeon bonuses were… ridiculous.

  Reducing the difficulty to gain the first level of any skill was a massive bonus. For some skills, that wasn’t a huge deal, like strength or flexibility. Both of those were easy to acquire, if tedious. The method to getting them was consistent and repeatable.

  However, many skills were far more esoteric. If you wanted to gain access to a magic type you had never used before, then you needed to learn to feel something you had never felt before. Making that gap smaller allowed for incredible advances.

  The bonus for soul… I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Soul skills were rare. Technically, the ritual I had performed was that type of magic, linking me to the dungeon, but that was a product of my race. Making binding constructs for the soul was part of who we were.

  Soul based skills were often bizarre, but almost always powerful.

  And, if I combined the discount from both, it should cumulatively give a discount of slightly less than half. Often, the last half of gaining a new skill was the hardest. Jumping over that would be massive.

  However, I didn’t know what getting these bonuses even meant.

  The bonuses came from the nature of the dungeon. The soul part could be due to having two souls in the same dungeon, or those two souls could have lead it to learn more about the nature of the soul and specializing in it. Unfortunately, that became a paradoxical situation without an answer, except for one: The dungeon was almost certainly unusually powerful with the soul.

  The other bonus… was a general improvement to learning anything for the first time.

  The very room I stood in, with the altar and its displays, seemed to be a tribute to the dungeon’s desire to know everything.

  Again… I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  My new class didn’t feel any stronger. And, indeed, when I tried to manipulate the dungeon, my powers did not feel any stronger. Without the dungeon being conscious, it appeared that my access to the dungeon was the same as it always had been.

  When I concentrated, however, I could feel powers that I lacked access to. I would need to wait for the dungeon to wake before those would become available. Assuming it wanted to let me use them, anyway.

  As for my racial abilities, they had all improved, but none were noticeable. The well lit room already offered no barrier to my sight.

  My AP continued to mount up.

  As was tradition for Seekers, I had avoided spending it whenever possible. I had a number of emergency options I had memorized that I could buy with a moment’s thought, just in case. With my connection to the dungeon complete, it would determine what I should buy.

  I had thousands of connections to my soul, but I felt empty.

  I knew it was necessary for Caden and Exsan to learn to communicate with us, but I felt incomplete. I needed to talk with them. I needed to learn what to do, what they wanted, how I could serve them.

  For the moment, I just needed to do what I could.

  I left the room, and Izradi was waiting for me. His emerald eyes fixed themselves on me as soon as I left.

  “Ancient, how may I serve?” he said. “I apologize for largely being absent before, I was managing much of the setup and testing schedule. I sent others to ask you questions as needed.”

  “Ah,” I said. “I assume you are my assistant?”

  “Yes, Ancient,” he said. “I am a Settlement Manager, though I may get an upgrade to my class from serving you.”

  His eyes gleamed with zealous avarice.

  Of course I would get one of the fanatics.

  We all worshiped the dungeon, as was natural, but some became obsessed with it.

  I smiled at him, but my heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t seem to notice.

  I started to walk toward the Adar encampment, and he followed.

  “Okay, we need to do a few things then. Firstly, I assume you brought all the samples and such that I asked for?” I said.

  “Yes, Ancient.” Izradi replied. “At least, as much as could be found quickly. Additional shipments should be sent over time as larger or more difficult to collect specimens are located. Since you said that it prizes knowledge, additional agents have been sent to various human cities to purchase books and other items. Various Adar texts are being copied, but they won’t be sent until a secure method of delivery is available.

  Brief inquiries were made of the Blaze Blossom Dungeon before we left, and it said that it only gains limited information when it dissolves any magical item. So we may want to save those for when the dungeon is available to say what it wants done with them.

  The contingent from the Sunken Citadel Dungeon will be here in the next one to two weeks, depending on how much Thaw impacts the salt flats.”

  “Okay,” I said, thinking for a moment. “We will hold off on the enchanted items and emblems then. Arrange for the others items to be offered. Also, as soon as people finish the dungeon’s tests, form parties to have them start delving. Don’t have any parties go farther than the Meadow, the rest still needs to be evaluated. We can at least give the dungeon what it needs to grow, even if we don’t know for sure what else it needs.

  What else do I need to know?”

  “We have enough food for several weeks, but we will want to create more in some other fashion.” He said. “We could go form a settlement at one of the entrances, collect food from the dungeon, or carve out a new cavern in an area that the dungeon has not grown to yet. As another option, sufficient monetary resources were brought that we could order food from the nearest cities for several years if needed.”

  “Right,” I said, “the dungeon already has some food available to harvest. I will give you my notes later. Everyone who delves should be on the lookout for more. We… should prepare a section at the base of both entrances, regardless. If we don’t use it for farming, we can use it for trade. Just in case, order enough non-perishable food for forty days, twenty days worth from each country.”

  “Yes, Ancient.” He said. “Also, I would like to note that we have a number of Stabilizers available. Anything they should focus on?”

  “Honestly,” I laughed for a moment, “they need to focus on everything. Get them into the dungeon as soon as possible. Make sure they are with strong teams, and repeatedly clear sections as fast as possible.”

  “Yes, Ancient.” He replied.

  Our conversation continued on for some time, dealing with the multitudinous details needed for a settlement to function. Izradi would occasionally send out his own assistants to deal with different details.

  Not too long after we started, the first team was sent off to go through the dungeon, but they came back in only a few minutes.

  The leader of the party came up and bowed to me.

  “Ancient,” he said. “There is a problem. The entrance into the dungeon has changed.”

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