"Wait, is there something wrong with them? I thought they were just, you know, not awake." Elody tried standing up straight as she answered. She had attempted to turn her tone serious as well, but the hiccups hadn't stopped, ruining the attempt.

"Each of the dungeon cores looks like it has been lobotomized," Karlinovo answered softly.

"Oh no, that's horrible!" There were a few tears in her eyes now.

I made a mental note never to accept any booze from Yorela before continuing. "Do you know where they came from? We want to try to help them, but the cores are clueless as to what happened to them exactly."

"Likely, they were installed by the original master librarian. I was just another in a long line. I'll do whatever I can to help them, though. I had no idea we were using such tortured cores." Elody seemed to have steeled herself finally. Either the booze was wearing off or she had managed to fight through some of it.

"Thank you," Corey replied.

"It's past time we started working on retrieving some of the Archives' contents anyway. There are many books that would prove useful. I'll begin to work on that once my head clears a little," she said with a smile, and one last small hiccup.

"I appreciate the help. Well, unless anyone has any other questions, I think it's time to let Elody head to bed. And it's getting late for Karlinovo and me, too," I said, giving a nod to Elody.

"Will you leave the other cores with us?" Traveler Thirty-Two asked.

"Sure, if there's anything you can do to help, please do." I hoped there was, but with what we knew so far, I was worried they were too far gone. That thought stayed burned into my brain as I tried to sleep. And if it bothered me this much, I knew it had to be bothering the other cores far more.

Another two weeks passed with no sign of Mel. While I was starting to get worried about the man, there were several other things that worked to take my focus off the potential for anxiety. Elody, with the help of Quarilyn, had found a way to slowly and carefully remove one book from the stored Archives at a time.

We wouldn't be able to place it back within the storage of the transport vehicles, but that didn't mean we couldn't move them to the start of the long-awaited library of our own. Beneath the meeting hall, which was yet again growing, a secure library had been started. First, we placed what few books and materials we had that weren't from the Archives, allowing visiting scientists to study them, but now we were able to remove one more book per hour without the danger of accidentally purging the entire system into the middle of the city. Eventually, that would be the goal. The books just had to wait until we had a safe place ready to store them all.

Above the meeting hall, we had added three floors as well. Pryte had moved into a room up there, as had Rabyn and most of his cooking staff. John, Maud, and Alex were still in my now greatly expanded cabin, while I finally had a finished bedroom off of a smaller, more personal workshop. I kept that one limited to members of the homestead only.

The main construction of Alexandria, or at least what was planned above ground before winter, had finally finished. That was another one of the big distractions today. The newly formed city council, as their first official act, had declared today a public holiday. And while I had refused their invitation to be a guest of honor, I did promise I'd attend several of the celebrations.

To my surprise, the elected council contained three humans and five Reltleons. I knew Grant had convinced several hundred people to join the city at this point, but I was still surprised to see Reltleons voting for any. Then again, the fact that Grant was one of the elected may have explained it.

"So, how does it feel to be an elected city official?" I asked him over the lunch we both found ourselves at.

"Strange. I didn't run for this, so I had no idea it was coming. Hell, I even checked in with my supervisors to make sure this was something acceptable, and shockingly, they were happy with it. For now, though, I'm just going to keep up what I'm doing. We keep seeing more feral mana beasts out there, and even if none of them have been as dangerous as the bear, I don't want to risk losing track of their populations or risk anyone's lives near us. Speaking of, how is Rabyn doing?" Grant asked after his explanation.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

His disgust for the Orc seemed to have finally fully vanished after the polar bear incident. Rabyn's determination to find out how big the danger to the city was had done a lot to build Grant's respect for him, and I was glad we were moving past that hostility. Both of them were important people in this Empire that I had been forced to put together.

"He's doing better. The arm isn't entirely back yet, but with Elody's daily healing, we are getting closer," I replied.

"Hopefully, with the school opening, we can get some more people trained in healing. How do we get more mana orbs anyway? I'm guessing we are going to want a lot more if we are planning to train up as many people as we can." Grant made a weird face after taking a bite of something dark purple following his question.

"That's likely a matter of funds, and probably why dungeon raiding is becoming more and more likely as time passes. We just need to get Earth into a safe position before we start that," I replied. I took a bite of the same dish Grant had just tried. It had a very sweet flavor, mixed with an odd, almost fish-like aftertaste. I understood the weird face now.

"That's going to be an interesting experience. Do you think we will get to see a lot of alien worlds?" Grant sounded incredibly interested in the idea.

Truth be told, I was, too. As much as I had heard talks of other factions and worlds within the Spiral, I had only personally been to two of them. I'd love to see Elody's home planet or any of the wonders we had heard about. Plus, there was the matter of Maud's quest and what we needed to do to get her going down her path.

"I'd like to think so," I said, just as Pryte sat down across from us.

"Gentlemen. I just got word from Elody that we have several paladins en route. They will be here tomorrow," he said as a plate of food was plopped down in front of him.

"Several? I know we had a paladin of conservation coming to look into the moose, but who else?" I asked, not that I would try to stop it. Paladins were some of the people I was most curious to meet.

"Yeah, Elody was a bit surprised there. Apparently, we have the heads of conservation, knowledge, music, paths, and anarchy on the way," he answered.

"Those are some interesting paladin types. I guess I can understand music, but what does paths mean? Is it just like traveling?" I had gathered from what little I had learned on the topic that a paladin could specialize in any concept, and that would generally grow an order around them once it broke off, but the idea of just paths seemed odd.

"I've honestly never met one, they are a kind of rare type. Makes it really surprising they are coming. Then again, we do have a lost paladin class here, so it could be tied to that," Pryte answered in between bites. He seemed to be enjoying the purple food.

"Oh, oh! I had forgotten about that. Does that make Cecile important to them?" It wasn't that I had forgotten that he was a paladin, more that I had forgotten his class had been lost before he chose it.

"Not sure, but probably," Pryte answered.

That seemed to be all he had to say on the topic, as he moved on to small talk with one of the Reltleons serving us food. It wasn't the first time I had heard the man shamelessly flirt, but now knowing Yorela, I had a feeling for part of what ended their relationship. I shook my head and pushed my plate forward before I stood up and started wandering the city more.

There were Reltleons cooking different dishes all throughout the city. I sampled several of the ones that smelled the most savory as I passed from one place to another. Intermixed with each group of Reltleons were at least one or two humans. In some cases, Reltleons were the ones being served from a barbecue full of something that looked like hamburgers, though I suspected, given our location were probably more like venison burgers.

"Dad!" John called from a picnic table nearer the house as I slowly made my return.

He had just placed a plate in front of Maud. Alex and the brothers were already chowing down on their own. Cecile and Elicec had finally moved off the bus themselves, into a small cabin behind my original one. It was surrounded by the crops now, and I suspected a lot of this feast was some of the early successes.

"Hey guys, you all look like you're enjoying yourselves," I said as I sat down. Only then did I spot the moose standing to the side of the pavilion. Despite our attempts to build him his own home, he refused to leave the woods.

"This has been a nice stretch without any new chaos. Not counting the morning sickness," Alex said, with a smile.

"Yeah, it's been nice to just get to work on the fields and learn more about Earth. Though I hope we find out what's going on back home soon," Cecile said after finishing a whole ear of corn.

"Well, we've got a bunch of paladins coming to visit tomorrow. Hopefully that doesn't end this relaxation, but maybe we can get some news there," I said, giving the brothers a smile as I picked up an ear of corn for myself. We were going to have to make sure this holiday became an annual thing. It had been a nice change of pace.

Never, and I mean never, fight a chicken the size of a building. I don't care how much you're paid. I don't care how much you think you can fight a bird of any size. I'm telling you, the second a chicken that big looks at you with those eyes, you need to run faster than you can imagine.

A famous saying of the Kobolds from Tornklin

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