When I woke up, I was lying in bed, with Rue curled up beside me, his head resting on my legs. His voice shouted into my head. "Mahya! John awake!"

I groaned and lifted a hand to my face. "Don't shout. If she's close enough, she'll hear you just fine without the yelling."

In response, he licked my face from chin to forehead, drenching half of it in slobber.

Mahya burst into the room a moment later, her eyes wide. "How do you feel?"

"Like shit," I muttered.

"Are you sure?"

That caught me off guard. I turned to look at her, confused.

"I really want to smack you right now, but if you're actually feeling bad, I can't," she said.

I couldn't help smiling. Mahya's version of bedside manners was always an experience.

"Don't smile at me, you idiot. I really, really want to smack you." She pointed a finger at me as she stepped closer. "What were you thinking? When you blacked out, your hair lost all the purple, and your eyes turned pitch black. You didn't just drain your mana, you used your life force. You know that's dangerous. You've treated me in that condition. You've treated Malith in that condition. So tell me—what the hell were you thinking?"

"Al was dying," I said quietly.

She threw her hands in the air. "I know! I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the part after. We have mana potions, remember? Why didn't you drink one when you felt yourself running dry?"

"Oh."

She glared at me, eyes blazing. "'Oh? That's what you've got? Oh? Spirits, sometimes you drive me insane. One day you're a genius, the next a complete moron. Use your head, Spirits, damn you! I know wizards are weird, and I don't expect total logic from you. But this? This isn't weirdness. This is LUNACY!"

She stomped her foot, hands clenched into fists at her sides. "Spirits! I want to smack you so bad my hands itch."

"I'm sorry," I said, trying not to flinch.

"You should be." She shoved a vial into my hand. "Now drink your damn medicine."

"Yes, boss. And I love you too."

She glared at me, made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat, then exhaled hard. Her fists unclenched, and her shoulders slowly dropped. "Yeah, I love you too. And yes, you're a complete idiot. A total moron. And I will remind you of that a few more times."

I gave her a sheepish grin. "I'll take my punishment without complaints."

She jabbed a finger at me. "You better."

After Mahya left, Al stepped into the room. His skin still looked pink and tender, and he was completely bald—no hair or eyebrows—but aside from that, he looked much better.

He came to a stop at the foot of the bed, then bowed low, a full ninety degrees. "Thank you," he said quietly. "Thank you for my life."

I pushed myself up a little and gave him a tired smile. "Of course. We're a team."

He straightened, met my eyes, and nodded once. "Yes. Yes, we are."

It took me a few more hours to feel human again, but eventually, I did. I was glad it happened that quickly. After the dungeon in Lumis, when I had pushed myself too far, it had taken me days to recover.

The next day, I tried to get back to work by merging a core, but the look Mahya gave me stopped me cold. Her eyes locked onto mine with a glare that made my fingers freeze over the core. No words were necessary. That look made it very clear I should not even think about it. So instead, I spent the day with Rue, racing across the lake on jet skis. Just to be safe, I used the actual machine and didn't rely on water magic. I had a strong feeling about how Mahya would react if she saw me using mana too early.

She still called me an idiot, a moron, and a lunatic a few more times, but it was always with a smile and a glare she struggled to maintain. She had already cooled off and was clearly having trouble keeping up the act.

Over dinner, I remembered the bomb in my Storage and cleared my throat. "Ahem, ahem."

They both looked up.

"I have a bomb in my Storage."

They stared but didn't say anything.

I met their eyes and shrugged slightly. Not much more to add, really.

Mahya blinked first. She gave a little circling wave of her hand, the universal sign for go on. "Maybe start with a bit more context?"

"When they shot me, a bomb almost hit me, and I stored it. It's still there. I can fly somewhere and drop it, but I thought that if you have an idea how to take it out without exploding, you can examine it."

"I have no idea how," she said, her voice trailing off.

"I might have a solution," Al said, setting his cup aside.

We both looked at him.

"I possess a stasis field, typically used for potion work requiring consecutive timed stages. We can deploy the bomb within it. If it did not explode in Storage, it should remain dormant inside the field."

Al led us to his lab and gestured toward a metal box sitting on one of the side tables. "That is the field."

"You got it from the Alchemist who kidnapped us?" I asked, squinting at it.

He spun toward me, eyes narrowing. "How did you know?"

Mahya let out a laugh, crossing her arms. "The dragons gave it away."

Al turned back to the box, studied it for a moment, then hummed thoughtfully and gave a slow nod.

I crossed my fingers on both hands, cast Protective Shield just in case, and set the bomb in the field.

Phew.

It stayed dormant. That was a relief. It was also the first time I got a proper look at it. When I'd checked my Storage earlier, it had only been a quick glance. Now, with the stasis field holding it steady, I crouched next to the box and studied it more closely. For some reason, I'd been convinced the bombs were built with cores. Maybe because everything else around here seemed to be. But no. This one was a mana crystal, about five centimeters in diameter, pulsing faintly beneath a dense web of magic script. The signs were intricate and tight, forming a net that completely covered the crystal. I couldn't see all of it from this angle, but from what I could make out, there was a containment mesh woven through the pattern and a separate activation sequence wrapped around it. Or rather, something like an activation sequence. It looked like a repeating series of If/Then conditions, the same kind I used in my marble spells. Basically, it said: If something comes into contact with the crystal, drop the containment mesh. I interpreted that as the trigger.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

What really bothered me, though, was the basic logic of it. Mana crystals don't explode. They're stable, meant to store energy, not release it in a burst. So, how the hell did they make this one blow up? I kept staring at the script, hoping for some kind of clue. There had to be a trigger mechanism—something that converted the stored mana into a destructive release. Maybe a destabilizing loop hidden under the mesh? It was unclear, and I wasn't about to go flipping it over to check. For all I knew, one touch could make it explode.

Mahya mumbled something beside me, her eyes squinting at the runes.

"What?" I asked, glancing over.

"I hate script. It's always so convoluted and confusing."

"Any idea how they made it blow up?" I asked, still crouched over the field.

She looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. "You're the magic script expert. You tell me."

"I don't recognize a couple of the symbols they used, but I know most of them." I leaned in closer to the field, squinting at the layers. "Right now, all I can see is a containment mesh and an activation sequence."

"Flip it over?"

I glanced at her, then back at the crystal. "I'm afraid it'll blow up."

She gave a short huff and crossed her arms. "So store it and take it out upside down."

I crossed my fingers again, took a deep fortifying breath, did exactly that, and set it back down—this time rotated. Same result. The containment mesh completely surrounded the crystal. While there were a few extra markings linked to the activation sequence, none looked like anything that would actually cause an explosion. We spent over three hours staring at it, squinting at the mesh, and even copied the entire sequence to parchment, trying to spot something we missed.

Nothing.

By the end, we were both slumped on stools, parchment scraps scattered around us, completely stumped. Neither of us had the slightest idea how they managed to get it to explode.

None of us wanted to store a volatile bomb in our Storage for long, so I stored it without the stasis field, flew a few kilometers away, and dropped it on a grouping of cliffs. Some of them chipped off and fell, but besides that, there was no environmental damage.

The day after that, I returned to work as usual, and we picked up where we had left off. Well, almost where we left off. The boat needed some fixing. The explosion that knocked me into the lake had triggered two more mana bombs, which damaged the right side of the hull. It wasn't anything too serious, and Mahya said it would repair itself over time since the boat had a core. Still, I wanted to help and maybe make up for making her worry.

So, before merging any cores, I channeled Restore into the damaged sections until the boat looked as good as new. As a result, I had to spend half the day regenerating, and only managed to merge one core that afternoon. Just one for the entire day. Luckily, it passed without any comments or glaring. Helping her fix her beloved boat definitely improved her mood. She stayed mellow and far less fiery for the rest of the day, and didn't call me an idiot even once. Restoration magic for the win!

While I worked on the boat, Al kept diving into the lake, and looked gloomier and gloomier every time he resurfaced. His shoulders slumped a little more with each try, and by the fifth dive, his expression was downright stormy.

When I was done with the boat, I dove into the water and swam over to him. "What's going on? You look like somebody killed your dog."

Al slapped the water once, sending a wave against his chest. "My sword has fallen into the lake, and I am unable to locate it."

"So why didn't you ask me for help?"

He shrugged, barely meeting my gaze, then slapped the water with a short, angry splash. "You were busy."

"Now I have time."

I floated on the surface, letting my body drift with the gentle waves, then closed my eyes and let my awareness sink into the depths. It was a slow process. I could feel my vicinity immediately, but spreading it out took time and effort. The lake was pretty deep, a few hundred meters, and the pressure pressed against me the farther I reached. It took a while to get all the way to the bottom. Then, I spread my awareness in a growing circle from the initial point I touched, expanding outward like ripples.

There!

Covered by mud and shale was a long metal object. A faint magical hum bled into my senses from it. For some reason, it was harder to encapsulate it in water and lift it. Doing that with a fish was a breeze, but the sword resisted somehow. Or maybe its magic created a kind of clash with mine? It took a few tries. The first water bubble broke apart halfway up. The second made it farther before slipping free and scattering.

Finally, after what felt like a full-on underwater wrestling match, the sword breached the surface, glinting faintly in the sunlight. Al grabbed it immediately, clutching it to his chest as if it were a lost limb, then stored it. He turned and wrapped both arms around me, nearly knocking the air from my lungs and pulling me under with the weight of his gratitude.

I definitely did not expect that from him.

We continued working. Each day was a routine of taking apart trees, upgrading the boat, and merging cores. Al joined me on the core project after he finished merging the batch he had set aside for the future house. Once he was done, we set up a system. He handled the small cores, doing two merges a day, and I added those into the main growing core, also twice a day. By that point, each merge was taking around 9,000 mana, so even with my regeneration, two a day was my limit.

When the boat was finally done, we shifted our focus to the house, and that turned out to be one hell of a complicated project. The main magic circle embedded in the central support column was just the access point—the connection into the rest of the house's systems. In truth, the entire house was a single, massive, interconnected magical formation. Everything was linked to everything else, and the most tangled mess of connections was the spell room, especially with its nullification feature. That thing alone was a nightmare of layered logic and overlapping runes.

It was no wonder Lis earned the class he did. This house was the work of a genius. Only once we started working on it did I fully grasp just how brilliant it was. You couldn't see the whole picture just by studying the blueprints. They didn't do it justice.

As a first step, I wanted to ask the house to return to its original form, so we could study the baseline magical structure and work from there. That plan, however, turned out to be a lot more complicated than I expected. Al was terrified the house would swallow up his lab and greenhouse and not give them back. Mahya was just as worried about her workshop. And to be honest, I wasn't feeling too confident either. My darkroom and all my photography gear, and the stuff in the storage hall, weren't exactly expendable. We had cleared out quite a lot already—between the items we sold in the cultivator's world, the things we gave Sanctuary, and the few supplies I handed out in the slums of the capital. But even after all that, the house was still packed with stuff. None of us was sure how the reset would affect anything inside.

So, to play it safe, we spent three full days hauling everything out and storing it. If it wasn't nailed down, it got moved. Just in case.

Once the house was empty, I asked it to return to its original form. That was when the real work began.

We started with the blueprints and quickly realized that we needed to disassemble parts of the house. Not the whole thing, only about forty percent. On each removed section, I had to extract the mana from the existing runes before we could begin applying upgrades. Mahya and Al couldn't figure out how to do that part, but I managed it on my second attempt. Pulling the mana out deactivated the old runes, and from there, Mahya sanded the wood clean, prepping the surface for the new enchantments. Then the three of us applied fresh runes along with the new upgrades.

Since we were already elbow-deep in the guts of the house, I added a few things I had picked up in magic script along the way. The house now had its usual protective shield, but I also built in potion protection by applying a magic script "puzzle" similar to the one I used on the masks. I placed it in key areas, like doors and windows, so that the house wouldn't be vulnerable to alchemical effects.

Another upgrade was enhanced mana absorption, which I had learned while engraving crystals for Mahya's gizmo on the balloon. That gave me an idea, so I spent two days crafting another magic script puzzle—this one focused on reactive absorbent hardness. The idea was simple: if something hit the house, it would absorb the kinetic force and redirect that energy back into the impacted area to reinforce it.

While I worked on that, Mahya came up with a suggestion. She wanted the house to do the same thing with magic. If a magical attack struck, it should absorb the incoming mana and repurpose it to strengthen the affected section. It took me another two days to figure that one out, but I managed it.

Mahya and Al focused on applying the new runes, while I worked with the magic script. They both hated dealing with it and made sure I knew it. I couldn't understand why. Magic script is incredible. It's versatile and adaptive, not rigid like traditional runes. They didn't see it that way.

Due to all the additions I made, we had to disassemble some previously upgraded parts, re-extract the mana using the mana-cleaning system, and have Mahya sand the wood thoroughly. Then they reapplied the runes, and I added the script enhancements.

I was absolutely sure Mahya would want to kill me for it—or at least glare at me for half a day—but I was completely wrong. She was all in and handled it with enthusiasm. The only negative reaction I got was her usual grumbling about the magic script and her complete inability to understand how I was combining it with traditional runes. Other than that, she was totally on board, even when it meant redoing work we had already finished.

All told, the house took us about a month to complete, but when it was done, we were thrilled with the result.

During the entire upgrade process, the house stood outside with its core removed, which meant that on some nights, one or more of us had to crash in the living room. Our rooms were occasionally unavailable. The kitchen upgrade was the roughest part. I couldn't cook properly without it, so we mostly barbecued and threw together salads. That worked great for lunch and dinner, but not so much for breakfast. I ended up making breakfast on the boat.

Yes, we were four spoiled Travelers, and we absolutely bitched every time we experienced the slightest drop in comfort.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.