Chapter 73 – I Have No Words … Wow, Just Wow! (Patreon)

I followed Lis's instructions and boarded a flight to Toulouse. After I landed, I rented a car and drove to Balma. When I got there, I called Lis and told him where I was.

He sent me a WhatsApp location half an hour's drive from Balma and told me, "When you get to the driveway, stop, but don't get out of the car. I'll come to pick you up."

I arrived at a farm outside Balma with a seemingly abandoned access road, and after reaching the gate, I parked and called Lis.

He arrived after a few minutes, hugged me, and said, "Good to see you, my friend."

After petting Rue, scratching his neck and ears, and receiving lots of face licks, he asked me, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. I'm going to blindfold you and lead you inside. Don't peek, and follow all my instructions."

"OK."

He tied a thick black cloth over my eyes and led me, holding my shoulders.

Rue sent me, "No! Tell! Lis! No! Tell!"

"Lis told you not to tell me what you see?"

"Yes!"

"No problem, buddy, don't tell me. Friends don't tell their friends' secrets."

After ten meters, Lis said, "Now there are a few steps, and then I will lead you inside."

After we entered a building, Lis asked me, "Do you trust me completely?"

"Yes, without a shadow of doubt."

"Excellent. I need to cut your palm and draw some blood from you. You can heal yourself right after. After that, I need a few minutes, and then I will instruct you on the next steps."

"OK."

He cut my palm and pressed it to draw blood. After he finished, he left me, and Mahya hugged me and said, "I missed you."

"I missed you too, both of you. The first few days, I felt a little lost alone."

"Did it get better?"

"Yeah, Rue helped, and I had homework to do."

Lis asked, "Did you manage to build a ranged spell?"

"No, not yet, but I'm working on it. I built a fire dart, but now I'm learning how to make it fly."

"Excellent."

Mahya and I continued talking for another fifteen minutes until Lis approached me and said, "Everything is ready. I'm going to place you in the middle of a ritual circle. You need to bend down, and I'll place your hands. Once you've positioned yourself, channel the mana until you no longer feel the need; you'll be able to identify the sensation. You'll have a slight headache. Once the headache subsides, you will become aware of something new, but please refrain from exploring this new awareness. Hold back. After that, I need another minute, then we'll take off your blindfold, and you can see the surprise."

"OK."

He led me a meter forward, told me to bend down, placed my hands, and said, "Start channeling."

I poured mana until I felt that I couldn't anymore. I experienced a build-up of pressure in my head, which eventually intensified into a searing pain before ceasing. I felt like my mind had expanded and now contained something within it. I had the impression that it was a house, but I stopped myself and decided not to investigate further.

Mahya took off my blindfold, and I looked around. I was standing on the first floor of a house. To my right was the kitchen, and I could see most of it, with a bar table and high chairs separating it from the living room, as well as some light fixtures hanging. One of them drew my attention, and I sensed a connection with it.

Lis saw where I was looking and said, “It’s always good to hide things in plain sight.”

I didn’t understand but decided to ask for clarification later.

The living room had sofas, armchairs, and beanbags around a low table with a fireplace on the far side inside a supporting stone beam, with stairs beside it. The wall on the left had large windows, and behind me was a door with two more windows.

I saw a gallery above the kitchen with bookshelves and sofas.

It was strange; I both saw and felt the space in my head, as if it were a part of me.

I asked Lis, "Why do I feel the house? I understand it had to do with the ritual, but how? I don't understand what's going on here."

"This is your new home away from home. This is the project on which Mahya and I have been working with all of those blueprints. We built the house around a dungeon core, and we performed a ritual to transform you into the dungeon master.”

"My house is a dungeon?"

"Not exactly. It's built around a dungeon core, but it won't behave like a typical one. The house channels the mana from the core into its functions, while special filters channel the trash mana out to prevent monster creation.

Mahya asked me, "Want a tour?"

"Of course!"

They led me outside, and I looked at the house. It stood on a platform with short stilts adapted to the ground's contours. Wooden stairs led to a porch that surrounded the house on three sides. It had two floors, and I could see an attic with a window. It was beautiful!

"Did you do all this in five weeks?"

"Not exactly," answered Mahya. "We worked on it for more than a year whenever you weren't with us. The process of converting electrical appliances to mana Lis started back in England; he got his class not because of the mini radio but because all your electrical appliances in the kitchen work on mana. The radio was a cover. We bought the rest of the things and hid them in our storage. Now we just had to assemble everything and do all the enchantments."

“This is amazing.”

Lis said, “Raise the house a meter.”

“How?”

“Just will it so. You’re the dungeon master.”

I did, and the stairs extended with the house; now, instead of six steps, there were eleven.

“Cool! The stairs extend!”

“Look under the house,” said Lis.

I did, and I could see rolled-up rubber things. “What is that?” I asked.

“Heavy-duty commercial-grade inflatable bridge pontoons,” said Lis. “I added them to my house, too. They are virtually indestructible, I checked, and if something happens to them, they are enchanted and will regenerate. You can park your house on a lake or a river, but don’t try sailing in it; no steering.”

“Every wood plank the house is made of is enchanted, too,” added Mahya. “It can take powerful attacks and shrug them off, and if something manages to damage it, the wood will regenerate.”

“Will the protections to activate,” said Lis.

Wooden shutters came down on all the windows, and I felt a force field surrounding the house along the porch railings.

Lis said, "The field you feel absorbs mana. So, any spell cast on the house will be absorbed instead of damaging it, and the mana will be channeled into the core. Also, anything with hostile intent that touches the field will have its mana absorbed and channeled into the core."

"How will the house know they have hostile intent?"

"Magic can read intention; haven't you figured it out yet?"

"I didn't think it could read intent to this level." I said, "But if I have the house's protective field, why are the shutters there?"

"Physical attacks."

"Oh."

"You have control over the defenses. I noticed you didn't like my house killing the snakes, so I didn't put active defenses in your house. But if your house is attacked, you can activate the second stage of the defenses, and whatever attacks the house will be struck by lightning."

They led me into the kitchen and showed me everything. I had a silver two-door refrigerator from Earth, and when I opened it, it looked just like a standard refrigerator, but it turned out it ran on mana. There was a large sink with hot and cold water, four cook burners that also worked on mana, a regular baking oven, a pizza oven with a stone, and plenty of storage space for dishes. In addition, the kitchen had six hanging light fixtures, one of which was the dungeon core. I understood what Lis meant by hiding something in plain sight.

“You don’t have to channel your mana to fill up the crystals; the core does it even with the low mana on Earth.” Lis said, "Underneath the entire first floor is a water reservoir. I don't know how many gallons it can hold, but it's quite a lot. All the water from the house circulates through the Clean and Purify spells and returns to the reservoir in pristine condition. Every so often, when you're near a river, fill it with more water. You can fill even from the sea or a swamp; the water will go into the reservoir pristine."

“How do I fill it up?”

Lis opened the door of one of the kitchen cupboards, and inside was a very long, rolled-up fire hose. He said, "Just put the end of the hose in a water source, and the house will do the rest."

A door next to the refrigerator led to a room behind the kitchen that ran the entire length of the house. Only tatami mats covered the floor of the empty room, and runes covered all its walls. I saw many mana crystals embedded in the walls.

“Store the mats,” said Lis.

I did, and I saw that the floor was also covered with runes and crystals. This room contained most of the crystals we collected from the snake cave and that I harvested from the monsters.

“This is a magic practice room; all the wizards I met had something like this. You can work on spells here; the room will remain intact regardless of what happens. This room channels all the magic you use back into the core. It’s also completely insulated for rituals.” Lis said and instructed, "Will the floor to transform into a ritual configuration."

It took me a second to figure out how, and all the runes and crystals sank into the floor.

“Even if you need to engrave a ritual into the floor,” Mahya said, “The floor will return to normal after you change it back to the practice room configuration.”

By this point, my jaw was hanging so low that I was afraid it would hit the floor, and I was speechless.

"You can will the crystals to absorb all the ambient mana in the room, creating a neutral space for rituals or a dead zone where you can play with all the electronics you keep buying. But remember to store them before you open the door, or the mana from the rest of the house will fry them.” Lis said, “You can also make the core release more mana into the room for better regeneration, but don’t overdo it right now. With the mana levels on Earth, the core is pretty empty. In higher mana worlds, preferably above thirty, you can go crazy.”

He pointed to a pedestal in the corner of the room, where the large crystal we collected from the mommy snake stood. "Change this crystal's aspect to lightning."

"Now?"

"Yes."

It took me twenty minutes to fight with the crystal. The crystal really didn't want to be electric.

"Done," I said.

Lis pointed out two rows of electric sockets along the pedestal's legs. "Allow the crystal to refill from the core. After that, you can drain the room of mana, making it a dead zone, and here you can charge your electric toys. To be safe, test it with something small you're not afraid to lose. I couldn’t test it without the correct aspect, but it should work."

They led me up the stairs to the gallery, which had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves the full length of the house, three armchairs, and two giant beanbags. Rue jumped on one of them, settled comfortably, and shouted into my mind, “Mine!”

“Enjoy, buddy; this is officially your beanbag.”

The ceiling was a bit low and reached a centimeter above my head; a taller person would have to stoop, but for reading, it was perfect.

More steps led us to the second floor, and we went up. On the second floor, on one side, there were two empty guest rooms of medium size, with a shared shower and toilet. There was no bath, just a shower. The toilet, unlike the one in Lis's house, was a regular Earth-style toilet, with the Void and Purify crystals embedded in the wall to its right. Each room had a private balcony.

On the other side of the hall was the master bedroom, also empty, with a large bathroom with toilet, bath, and shower. One wall had floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a large balcony.

At the end of the hall, there were stairs to the attic. The attic was the house's total size. Bookshelves were located along the walls, which sloped down with the shape of the roof. Some were filled with folders full of papers. On the other side were several more bookshelves filled with large, rolled sheets of paper and parchment.

Two sets of seating areas were in the center of the space, which was high enough to stand. In one, there were two two-seater sofas and two armchairs around a low table; in the other, there were two chaise lounges and three beanbags around another low table. A massive desk with an armchair on one side and two chairs in front of it stood by the window, and a large drawing table was by the door.

Mahya said, "The folders contain all the knowledge I could gather from all the engineering skills I bought from Guidance. The level of knowledge won't be the same as that of someone who studied. Still, with the experience I've gained from space flight and working on the planet we planned to colonize, I've learned a lot about building power plants to convert matter into energy, building spaceship engines, and building artificial intelligence with crystals. The rolled pages are the drawings that accompany the written material."

Lis said, "All the parchments are the blueprints of the house, which include all the enchantments and electrical appliances, as well as various blueprints of Magitech devices that I have conceptualized. I haven't built or tested some of them, but they should work. Some of the folders contain everything I've learned in the field of engineering combined with my knowledge of magic with the help of my Mind Index; this should give you a deep understanding of how your house works and how to build things in the future."

At this point, I just listened to them in shock. I had no words except to say "Wow” repeatedly.

I hugged Mahya and told her, "I have no words to express my admiration and gratitude for everything you have done here."

"You saved my life, repaired my mana system, and served as a friend and guide for a long time. It's not even a tenth of what you deserve. But I accept the thanks."

I hugged Lis and told him, "Thank you. I have no words."

He told me, "You don't have to thank me. You were a friend who helped me with what I needed; I'm a friend who helped you with what you needed. That's how friendship works."

I just nodded with tears in my eyes—I was too overwhelmed.