(Curator POV)

It’s has been a few days since the incident with Keith and his band, life has returned more or less back to normal or that was what I liked to say, Alice has apparently gotten a body and is no longer a disembodied voice although we are still linked together and can send our thoughts to each other, it’s still lonely not having her by my side never the less, Alice now spends most of her time maintaining the library which is still book-less, dusting and wiping the shelves each day it seems that she got this way because I ranked up.

Name: ???

Gender: true Dungeon

Race: dungeon heart

Dungeon rank: 3

Dungeon Points: 1500/1500

Skills: Lore Dungeon; rank 2

Confused I focus on Lore dungeon, hoping that it would show me what it does.

Lore Dungeon

Rank 1: become the first true dungeon of this type (lore), this skill is a fusion between the following skills (lore mastery + Dungeon rule).

This skill rank comes with the following abilities.

Abilities Unlocked: Dig, lore creature mastery (fairytale), lore floor expansion (fairytale), Lore encounter (fairytale), lore material creation (fairytale).

Rank 2:

This skill rank comes with the following abilities.

Abilities Unlocked: Dungeon Avatar, lore creature mastery (folklore), lore floor expansion (folklore), lore encounter (folklore), lore material creation (folklore).

I let out a hurray in my heart as I see that I have access folklores now, the abilities act the same as their fairytale counter parts, what I was interested in was Dungeon Avatar.

Ability; Dungeon Avatar: allows the user to designate an individual as their avatar.

The information I was given from the skill description was sparse to the least, then I started pondering what the skill really entailed when it hit me, “Alice can you show me your status screen?”, after a while of waiting Alice just responded with an “okay.” and showed me her status screen.

Name: Alice

Gender: Female

Race: Dungeon avatar/Fairytale

Skills: Lore keeper; rank 3, Avatar’s body; rank 1

Looking through her status screen, one of the most notable things is that her race is Dungeon Avatar in addition to the fairytale race, knowing that fairytale already entails that your body is made out of paper, I look at the description of Dungeon avatar.

Type: Dungeon avatar

Dungeon avatars are the physical manifestation of a dungeons will and will usually be the dungeons main form of communication to other races. The race Dungeon avatar race will never show up alone but will instead appear in conjunction with another race, that being said the Dungeon avatar is more like an addition rather than a standalone race, as it will enhance the attributes of the race that it is paired with along with enhanced strength and durability.

So according to Dungeon avatar race, Alice represents me in this world which am actually glad about if there’s anyone in the world in world I would want to represent me it would be Alice, with how professional she is and all, on another note I also look through her two skills Lore keeper and Avatar’s body.

To my surprise Lore keeper has similar abilities to my Lore dungeon skill, rank 1 gives the ability Call item which allows the user to store items inside the pages of a tome (the bigger the item the more pages it requires) and rank 2 and rank 3 give her abilities that I am familiar with, that being lore creature mastery (fairytale) and lore creature mastery (folklore) respectively, where the abilities differ is in its restrictiveness which states that the user must observe and record a fairytale/folklore into a tome, than they may summon them, with the additional restriction that the stronger the monster the more pages it requires). As a side note, Avatar’s body just gives the ability increased attributes which is pretty self-explanatory after reading the avatar race description.

On day after Alice was done her routine of maintaining the library we decided to take a crack at trying the abilities, luckily Lyra who visits daily to talk with Alice had a tome on her which we barrowed, we started of small with the rank 1 ability Call item on a small potion, which Lyra lent us, both the tome and the item started to glow brightly, and then nothing, there was a big question mark over my head but Lyra and Alice seem to understand why it failed, Lyra was the first one to voice her thoughts “perhaps the paper has to be enchanted”, Alice nods once at Lyra’s opinion approvingly, apparently they had the same thought, Lyra than started to pull out the enchanted paper she had collected from the defeated wolves while she was pretending to be part of Keith’s group.

The stack of paper was not bound together but we decided to try anyways, once again Alice used Call item, the items where consumed by the glowing light again, but this time once the light faded the small potion was no longer in the room and there was now writing on the paper, in total there was now twenty pages worth of text, reading through it Lyra pointed out that this listed the base ingredients of the small potion their attributes, descriptions of their physical properties and the preparation method, apparently the potion only had 4 ingredients but that alone took up 15 pages with the preparation method taking up 4 pages, the last page had the name of the item written at the top and a weird sigil below which took up 90% of the page.

Moving on with our experiment, this time we had Alice summon the small potion from the pages which she did pretty naturally by placing her hand on the sigil and chanting the base ingredients and the preparation method for the item, there was a *poof* once the smoke dispersed the small potion was back on the desk and the writing on the paper was gone, while I was excited by the prospect, Lyra was practically ecstatic to the point even Alice was surprised and taken aback, seeing Alice confused Lyra explained that this would revolutionize transportation as they know it!

We had Alice record and summon two more times, Alice repeating the process this time looked a little haggard, but did a good job at hiding it behind a cool façade as to not worry Lyra, than on the last test I asked Alice if she could summon the small item without the chat, Alice just agreed to my query and started the process again, and it was a success, the item appeared again but Alice was down for the count luckily Lyra caught her as she collapsed and put her on the table, quickly she uncorked the small potion and let Alice sip on it by the time the bottle was empty Alice was back on her feet giving Lyra a small thankyou bow.

According to Alice the reason this happened was because “when chanting it takes longer but there is less strain on the mind and when not using a chant all the information get stuffed into mind”, as quoted by Alice, Lyra was visibly let down from this information as her dream of a better transportation, seeing how recording and summoning a small potion caused such stress on the mind, with that we decided to move in to the other skills, going into the dungeon Alice and Lyra waited as I got a wolf to walk up to them so Alice could record it.

After a while there was flash of white light than nothing, looking at the papers it looked like it did record somethings but cut off, assuming that we didn’t have enough paper, we than turned towards the large tome that Alice appeared with when she was made my avatar, the tome was half the size of Alice which made it seem she would have trouble holding it which strangely enough she had no problem carrying it, on the cover of the tome there were pictures of dandelions and lavender heathers on it making a pretty beautiful picture, the immense tome was about a thousand pages in total.

Once again we attempted to use the ability, after a few hours the glow stopped, this time it was a success, I left the wolf back to it devices as I checked the results, the wolfs information took up about 150 pages worth of text, when trying to summon it, the chant was noticeably longer than with the small potion, upon finishing the pages of the book flew out and formed into the shape of the wolf with the only difference being that it was slightly bigger, Alice gave it some orders like sit, attack and shake, the wolf did everything it was ordered, satisfied Alice released the summon but unlike the potion the wolf jumped back into the book and once again became paper in the tome.

It was getting late so Lyra decided she would return to the camp she set up right outside the dungeon entrance, while leaving she informed Alice that the workers form the Adventurers association would be here in a few days with other adventurers that are looking to make a name for themselves, also ominously like she just remembered Lyra also added that Alice and I should be more weary if adventurers because not all of them are as amiable as she is.

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(A pub somewhere in the north)

A large man that could be mistaken for a bear burst into the pub that he frequented and shouted “A spirit dungeon just popped up!”, while the older generation clientele just shrugged at the news while the younger generation was basically jumping up and down as they celebrated a chance to finally get out this hell hole.

While many were celebrating one girl sauntered out of the pub and to a dingy looking hut, upon opening it there was a woman with black hair sitting by the fire place knitting, a man with blond hair sharpening his sword in the corner while their five kids played quietly in the corner, this was the girl’s parents and younger siblings, “Ma! Pa! Am going south to become an adventurer!”, her parents knew it would come to this their first born had always been a curious and adventurous child, there was no way she was going to ever be satisfied living in the desolate north.

They knew they couldn’t stop her she was also known for her unmatched stubbornness in the village something she inherited from her mother, so they decided to send her off the best they could, her father gave her a hug and handed her the sword he was polishing, it was his most trusted partner when he was in the military now it would protect his daughter in his stead, her mother came up also giving her a hug, she didn’t have much to give her daughter but some money she had been saving up on the side and an earful on how she should act in the big cities and her siblings who were too young to understand what was happening ran up and also gave their big sister a hug because everyone else was doing it.

“I’ll write you once a week and I’ll tell you about all the adventures am having and all the friends am making and and I’ll send you money once I become a first-rate adventurer and and...” The girl’s voice trailed off as she started to cry, it was a solemn moment as she cried her heart out, after a while all her tears dried out and she got gathered up her belongings she thought she would need, it lasted what seemed like forever giving her plenty of time to take back her words, but no it has always been her dream to become a first-rate adventurer and she wasn’t going to give out now.

Opening the door “remember I’ll write every week, so you better write back!” the girl shouted as she headed down the road leading out of the village.

“Zhenya, remember to eat every day and take a change of clothes.”, her mother shouted but Zhenya was already out of sight.

After seeing their daughter the family headed back into their house, that was when Zhenya’s mother started to rub her temples, “I swear that girl!”, on the wall was a map, a map Zhenya was supposed to take with her.