I was back on my feet and feeling great, so it was time to get back to work. Before heading out, I made breakfast and coffee for the gang. Yes, Sonak too. Lately, since he acted like a meek mouse around me and stopped spewing his religious bullshit, I was okay with him being in my space. I also appreciated the fact that he rushed to get Al when I was hurt, so I started to treat him better. Not smile or anything, but I didn’t ignore him. In my book, that was a vast improvement. If he wanted more, he had to work for it.

After breakfast, I headed toward the healing hall. Mahya fell into step beside me.

“You’re coming with me?” I asked, glancing at her.

“Yep.” She didn’t even bother to look at me.

“Why?”

“To make sure you don’t fuck yourself up again.”

I rolled my eyes and blew out a breath. “I’m not going to the zone, just to grow some limbs.”

She shrugged. “You managed to tear yourself to shreds at home. Only the Spirits know what you’ll do outside of it.”

I shook my head and waved her off, but she stayed right there at my shoulder. If she wanted to play the worried mother hen, fine. My prerogative was to ignore her.

That hovering routine dragged on for three days. She shadowed me everywhere, arms crossed, eyes always on me, like I might collapse at any moment. I did my best to ignore her, even when she let out a sigh every few minutes to remind me she was there.

By the third day, I finally snapped. “What’s with all the sighing?”

“Your work is boring.” She flicked her gaze over the half-healed patient.

“So stop following me and go do your own thing.” I waved a hand, trying to shoo her off.

She tilted her head and studied me for a long moment before nodding slowly. “Only if you promise to go straight home after your shift.”

Spirits, this girl was impossible. “Listen, I know you’re worried, and I really appreciate it. I know you care. But I’m not a little kid, so back off and give me some space.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Seriously? Not a kid? You got badly hurt twice! Once you almost died!”

I slumped, almost beaten by the truth of it, but then straightened my shoulders and set my jaw. I couldn’t keep letting her hover over me like this. “Yes, I got hurt, and I’ll probably get hurt again in the future. You can’t protect me from everything.”

Before she could answer, I stepped in and pulled her into a hug. She stiffened at first, then sank against me. “I know you love me. I love you too. But please, please, please let me breathe.”

I eased back and met her eyes. “You got hurt too, and I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I healed you, and life went on. Now, it was your turn to take care of me, and I’m thankful for it. But that’s it. It’s over. Life needs to go back to normal. Okay?”

She searched my face for a long moment, then finally let out another sigh, softer this time, and nodded.

Phew!

The next evening, Rabban handed me a square brown block, rough around the edges. “What’s that?”

“Tisus. You asked about it, so I got you some to taste.” He folded his massive arms, watching me expectantly.

I bit into it and frowned. It wasn’t exactly chocolate. The color was right, and it had the same hardness, but the flavor leaned closer to chicory coffee mixed with carob chocolate, only more bitter. My face twisted before I could stop it. Yeah, definitely not my thing. Chocolate was miles better.

Rabban chuckled at my expression. “No?”

I shook my head hard. “Definitely no.” With a dramatic sigh, I pulled out a bar of real chocolate from my Storage, feeling like I was tearing a piece straight out of my own heart. Sure, I still had a decent stock from Paris, but we hadn’t seen cocoa or anything like it in any world so far, and a quiet worry started growing at the back of my mind.

Rabban, oblivious to my sacrifice, popped the chocolate into his mouth and chewed happily, grinning like a kid. Then he lumbered off toward the pool level with Rue. The two of them weren’t swimming, but from Rue’s excited huffs, they were definitely up to something I couldn’t figure out.

That set my thoughts spinning. Cocoa trees. I needed to know if we could grow them. With that in mind, I went off to look for Al.

He was holed up in the alchemy lab at the Cleaners’ center, standing in the middle of a methodical mess. Four pots bubbled on burners, a cauldron glowed faintly as he channeled mana into it with his hand, and another cauldron stirred itself under his telekinesis. Thin mana lines snaked from his body to all the cooking stations, feeding the various pots. I’d seen him work before, but this was on a whole new level. I’d never watched him handle so much at once.

Just in case, I leaned against the doorway and kept quiet. Al was notorious for getting pissed if anyone distracted him and ruined a potion.

After fifteen long minutes, he finally finished with all his concoctions. Wiping his hands on a cloth, he turned toward me. “Do you require something?”

I grinned, unable to hide my admiration. “That was hella impressive. How do you keep so many potions going at the same time?”

“Level twenty ability.” He said flatly.

“Cool ability.” I gave a low whistle.

He inclined his head slightly. “Do you require something?”

“Yeah.” I pulled a small bag from my Storage and handed it over. “These are cocoa seeds. You think you can grow them?”

His brows lifted. “For what purpose?”

“To make chocolate.”

That earned the seeds a more thoughtful look. His fingers turned the bag over with care. Al had a notorious sweet tooth for cookies he staunchly claimed not to eat, and his favorite were chocolate chip.

“I can attempt to cultivate them,” he said at last.

“If you do, I’ll make you cookies.”

He straightened, nose tilting upward. “I do not eat cookies.”

I chuckled and clapped him on the back. “Of course not. My mistake. Still, see if you can grow those.”

For another week, I worked in the healing hall until I ran out of patients. There were still new arrivals each day, but nothing beyond that. A fresh group registered with the Cleaners, and one of them was a healer willing to help in the hall. It felt like the right time to relocate.

During this time, I leafed through the engineering books Mahya had brought back from the city. They were strange. Well, I had never really studied engineering books on Earth, so maybe they were normal for the subject, but I doubted it. Every system they depicted seemed to rely on cogwheels, which made no sense to me. The dunehoppers I had seen used balls for wheels. How exactly were cogwheels supposed to fit into that?

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That evening, over dinner, I told the others I was ready to move.

“Sonak and I were thinking of leaving,” Rabban said. He shifted in his seat, looking almost guilty.

“Why are you squirming?” Mahya asked, narrowing her eyes.

He squirmed a little more, exchanged a look with Sonak, and drew a deep breath. “We wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“What?” Mahya pressed.

Rabban waved a hand around the table. “All of you.”

The three of us leaned in, waiting for the rest.

“We want to go to Zindor.”

“So go to Zindor,” I said with a shrug, reaching for another bite of food.

Mahya’s eyes snapped to me in a death glare.

“What?” I asked her, spreading my hands. “You can’t clear all the dungeons in that world.”

“You sure?”

“If you try, I’ll kill you,” I said flatly.

Al gave a firm nod and added a low hum of agreement, backing me up.

Mahya slumped in defeat, and I let out a quiet, relieved breath. Just the thought of spending years in that land of doom and gloom, chasing dungeons, was enough to make me shudder.

After some discussion, Rabban and Sonak finally reached an agreement with Mahya. She pulled out her notebook and sketched a rough outline of the continent, marking the approximate locations of the Gates. With a few quick strokes, she showed them the route we had already taken, along with our planned path to the rest of the Gates.

Rabban tapped the page. “So these are the ones we stay clear of?”

“Exactly,” Mahya said. “This line here and a few kilometers on either side. The rest is yours.”

They promised to leave those dungeons alone. We also told them about Sanctuary, and I gave them letters for Roda and Rima in case they passed through.

After that discussion, they stayed for another two days. Sonak busied himself with buying all sorts of things they thought they might need, while Rabban spent most of his time in my pool with Rue or sitting down to a plate of smoked crab. I honestly wondered what he would do without those two things.

While he splashed around in the water, I examined his dunehopper, trying to figure out how the cogwheels worked with the ball wheels. They didn’t. But I did discover something interesting.

The balls and the hopper body weren’t connected. There was a space of about a centimeter between them, and the body actually hovered above the balls. Even when I sat on it, bounced a little, and pressed the body down as hard as I could, the space didn’t diminish. That only made me more curious, so I scanned it with my mana sense.

When I did, I managed to pick out the core inside. It took a while, since the whole thing was saturated with mana, but with enough focus, I located a denser concentration. That wasn’t the curious part, though. The real surprise was how it behaved. The hopper had a single core—of that I was certain—but it was split into three parts: one in the main body and one in each wheel.

I knew it was one core because after the train ride in Tatob I had learned to distinguish cores by their “personality.” This one felt consistent throughout, only divided. A strong connection tied the three parts together. It wasn’t like a visible line running between them, and it didn’t register in my mana sense, yet I could feel it on some deeper level.

I needed Mahya for this. I found her in her workshop, sleeves rolled up and hair tied back, working one of her forges, the propane one, while she processed the ores she had brought back from the mana occurrence. Sparks hissed as she hammered a piece into shape, the smell of heated metal thick in the air.

“I found something that might interest you,” I said.

She didn't look up from the glowing bar. “What?”

“It is easier to feel than to explain.”

First, I showed her the hovering body and watched her try the same things I did to make them connect, with the same result. Then I guided her through using her mana sense to locate the core parts in the dunehopper. It took a while. She frowned, shifted her stance, and tried again and again. At one point, she cursed under her breath in her own language and rubbed at her temples. When nothing came, she huffed, shook out her hands, and leaned in once more with even more determination.

An hour later, sweat beaded along her hairline, and her jaw was tight with concentration. Finally, her expression shifted. She straightened, eyes widening before she gave a short nod. “Yeah, you're right. Know how they did it?”

“Um… that’s why I called you?”

“I don’t mean the engineering part,” she said, folding her arms and tilting her head, “but how they split the core.”

“Oh. I think I do, but I need to experiment.”

She handed me a core without a word. I channeled mana into it like I did when merging cores, until it began to flow apart. It wasn’t exactly like liquid, but that was the closest description I could come up with. It was still a solid, concentrated mass of mana, yet it lost its round shape and became malleable in my hands. Usually, at this stage, I merged two cores and let them solidify as one. But this time I tried to push in the opposite direction, to break it apart into three.

It resisted.

No matter how hard I tried to pull it apart by hand, it held together, stubbornly cohesive. Worse, it began to solidify again, so I had to channel more mana to keep it malleable.

“Try pulling it apart with your mana,” Mahya suggested.

I gave it a try. At first, nothing. I couldn’t exactly form a hand out of mana to grab and pull. It was like trying to lift smoke with my fingers. The resistance only grew, and after a few failed attempts, I found myself cursing under my breath the same way she had earlier.

Then, after pushing at it from every angle, I finally stumbled on the answer. I didn’t encompass the whole core the way I used to when turning monsters into crystals, but it was similar in principle, with one major difference. Because the core was already saturated with my mana, I could control that part directly. I forced it to separate while at the same time slipping fresh streams of my mana into the gaps, holding them open and encompassing them.

I had to split my mind into five parts. One part for each piece I was forcing apart, one for keeping the flow of mana steady, and one for maintaining the partitions. Even with all five splits working, it was almost not enough. My awareness narrowed until nothing existed but the shifting, stubborn core in my hands.

When Mahya laid a hand on my shoulder, the sudden contact startled me. My divided concentration collapsed, and the core’s mana snapped back together into its malleable form before it began solidifying once more.

I dropped back in the chair, exhausted.

“I thought it worked,” Mahya said, leaning closer to study the core.

“It did. But I need another mind split to control the whole thing.” I rubbed my face with both hands, trying to push away the fatigue.

“You should get to working on it,” she said with a smile and winked at me.

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved her off with a tired grin. “In my spare time. Ideas?”

“It opens a lot of possibilities, but I’m not sure yet how to work with this information. I need to think about it.” She tapped her finger against her thigh, eyes narrowing in thought.

“Didn’t find anything in the books?”

She made a disgruntled sound and threw up her hands in disgust. “No. The only thing they have is over a thousand combinations of cogwheels. What’s the point of selling engineering books if they have only lies and bullshit?”

I shrugged and shook my head. Her answer was as good as mine.

On our last evening with Rabban and Sonak, I cooked a nice, fancy dinner, and we spent the whole evening telling them about our time in Sanctuary and what we had done there. To my surprise, Sonak gave us appreciative looks and even offered a few compliments for our help. At one point, he said, “It’s impressive what you did there. Helping people who truly needed it matters, and I respect you for that.”

I blinked at him, not quite sure I’d heard right. Maybe I had judged him too harshly. I still thought he was an idiot, but maybe he was a lesser idiot.

The following day, we all left for the zone. When we reached the Gate, Rabban turned toward us with a huge grin, the kind that made him look even taller somehow. He shook Al’s hand with enough strength to make Al’s arm jolt, then clasped mine with a warm squeeze.

Mahya didn’t get a handshake. Rabban scooped her up in a full hug that lifted her clear off the ground. She let out a startled laugh, her legs kicking a little before he set her back down.

Rue leaned in, tail sweeping the dirt, and Rabban scratched and patted him all over. Rue pressed his head against Rabban's chest and licked his cheek.

“Rue will miss Rabban friend,” he said.

Rabban chuckled and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. “I will miss you too, big guy.”

Rue raised his nose proudly. “Eat lots of good crab and snake, and if you find tasty food, save for Rue to taste.”

Rabban laughed louder this time, rubbing Rue’s neck. “I promise. I will save you all the tasties.”

Mahya snorted at his words and shook her head fondly.

Sonak stepped forward next. He shook our hands one by one. When he reached me, he met my eyes for a moment longer than usual, then gave a small nod before turning to follow Rabban.

A moment later, both of them disappeared through the Gate.

We headed to Outpost Twenty-One. The manager of three also warned me about twenty-four, so I decided to skip it, despite the fact that they were in desperate need of a healer. While we ran through the zone, invisible, of course, we chatted, and Mahya complained about being bored.

“So go explore,” I told her.

I couldn’t see her, but was sure she death-glared me. I could feel the evil power vibes drifting my way. When she didn’t answer, I added. “You can’t keep watching over me. We talked about it.”

She growled.

I smiled and wasn’t even worried about a head slap. Invisible and all that.

“I was also thinking about exploring this world,” Al said.

“So go with Mahya.”

“Come with us,” he said. “You can always return to the outposts later. You said you do not intend to explore the zone heart any further, so why not come with us?”

“Fine, let’s go be tourists,” I said.

Yeah, I could always return to the outposts later.