Zoe left Joe’s bar and Cosmic Leaped to the sky to make her way back to the capital, but halfway there she stopped and looked to the sky. The capital would be fine without her, she supposed. They didn’t really need her. Foizo kind of did, though. It was less pressing, to be sure, but Foizo’s problem was something only she could solve. And if it became a pressing problem at some point, then it would be better to know the answer ahead of time, of course.

  She nodded, satisfied with her reasoning and Cosmic Leaped up into the sky. The last time she made a trip to the moon was decades ago at least. She’d hardly even made it very far off the ground in recent memory, only going far enough in the air to not be impeded by a mountain or particularly tall tree when she flew across the country.

  Moments later, she was hurtling through space at a speed that shocked even her. With all of the increased mana that she had now — not to mention her more powerful teleportation skill, the distance she could travel with each Cosmic Leap was immense. As opposed to the few kilometers at a time she could handle before — or maybe one or two dozen kilometers if she got a number of levels under her belt with some good classes, she was jumping farther than she could even estimate anymore. A hundred kilometers each time? Two hundred, maybe?

  And each time, it only took a fraction of a second before her mana was recovered and she could leap again. In seconds, she was deep in space, with Abyllan shrinking rapidly behind her. Just a few hours after she stepped out of Joe’s inn, Zoe found herself landing on the surface of the moon with a grin plastered on her face.

  It wouldn’t be quite so impressive if she had to bring along some passengers, each one cutting into her mana bit by bit. But before, Zoe was hesitant to bring more than two or three people along with her. Now? With all the mana she had at her disposal — and without even putting the incredible amount of stats she was getting from her class into bolstering it further, she saw no reason she couldn’t bring as many people as she could reasonably get to hold on to her.

  If it took ten times as long to arrive on the moon then that would still only be a little over a day. Twenty people would be just two, maybe three days. That wasn’t all that bad, and fitting twenty people on her body somehow for a multiple day long trip would be a much more complicated problem to solve anyway. Let alone more.

  At least for getting to the moon, it seemed that the main limiting factor for Zoe’s skill was the need for her to be touching the people she brought with her. And that was a good feeling, for her. The moon wasn’t some distant object, unable to be accessed when she wanted to. Now she could pop in to her dungeon in the morning, check out any progress that was being made and then pop back home to feed the cats their dinner if she really needed to. It wasn’t quite the same thing as the entirety of space being made available to her, but it felt close enough.

  She floated just a few feet above the surface of the moon and looked up at the floating brown rock far in the distance. The people there were still dealing with the aftereffects of so much turmoil and chaos. Or at least the people in the Injellar capital were — who knows what other countries were dealing with at the time. Maybe they had their own wars and battles to deal with.

  And yet Zoe floated here, on the moon and none of those problems felt real anymore. It was pleasant, and would have been even more pleasant if she could actually breath without having to focus so much on the plethora of skills she used just to keep herself alive.

  She Cosmic Leaped off to the side, racing around the moon as she looked for her dungeon. She’d had landmarks on the moon before, craters that she recognized and mounds of rock that she used to navigate to her dungeon. But it had been so long that Zoe wasn’t confident she’d remember them if they even existed still anyway.

  It only took a few minutes to rush around the moon to find her dungeon, and she lifted an eyebrow when she did. The dungeon was completely different than she remembered — and not just in the ways that Foizo itself had changed either.

  Many of the changes Foizo had made were reflected in the dungeon. The expanded walls, new buildings that had been erected. The massive underground section with even more residences. Foizo on the Moon was still just as recognizable as Foizo, but on the moon as it always was.

  But it had taken its own route to get there, it seemed. The buildings weren’t made from the same materials as back on Foizo. Wood and gray stone made up the bulk of the construction back on Abyllan, but on the moon it seemed they used the loose regolith and a translucent frost filled with wisps of mana for most of their construction. Most of the initial buildings that the dungeon was created with were still the same, but most of the new buildings were made from the new materials.

  The walls had been completely replaced with the translucent blue frost material, with the corridors and rooms contained within them visible to everybody outside. Dozens of the little frost creatures wandered through the inside of the walls, and dozens more paced back and forth on the top of the walls.

  Zoe Cosmic Leaped inside the city to her home — Mike’s home now, she supposed. The crystalline creature sat in the kitchen at a table made from the loose regolith, bound together by lines of frost, scraping away at a frosty tablet with a jagged rock.

  “Mike,” Zoe said as she appeared.

  The creature looked up to her. “Ma’am?"

  “How’s it going Mike?" Zoe asked.

  “You named me Greg, Ma’am.” Greg said.

  “Oh.” Zoe scratched the side of her head. “Sorry. It’s been a while. You’ve made quite a lot of changes here, haven’t you? What’s with all the frost stuff?"

  Greg nodded. “The frost stuff, Ma’am?”

  “The blue translucent material you’re using for the walls and lots of the new buildings?” Zoe asked.

  “You requested we find a way to store mana, Ma’am. The frost allows us to expand the city while accomplishing that goal.” Greg explained.

  “How much mana is stored in the city right now, Greg?" Zoe asked.

  “I do not have an exact number, Ma’am.” Greg answered.

  “An estimate, then. Millions? Billions? How much are we working with, then? Roughly.” Zoe asked.

  Greg paused for a moment, his crystalline body still as a statue as he thought about Zoe’s question. “Perhaps one or two billion mana?"

  “Impressive. Have you found any uses for the mana?” Zoe asked.

  Greg’s head shivered in an attempt at shaking his head. “No, you asked to harvest and store mana, Ma’am.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Right. Okay, well try and find some way to use the mana that’s stored then. Prioritize harvesting and storing mana, but if the mana stores are full anyway then try to put the excess to some kind of a use. Defense would be fine but we might end up having some people come and live here soon, so try and make things more comfortable for humans. Spend some mana maintaining warmer rooms, creating more comfortable furniture, that kinda stuff. The common luxuries for people.” Zoe said.

  Greg nodded. “Eliza is returning?"

  “No, we have some other people who might be coming up to live here on a more permanent basis, depending on how things go. About that, has anybody else come to the dungeon since the last time I was here?" Zoe asked.

  “Many, Ma’am.” Greg answered.

  “Really?” Zoe raised an eyebrow. “Many?”

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg responded.

  “Do you have a list of them? Did you get their names?" Zoe asked.

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg answered.

  “Can you share the list? I would like to see it.” Zoe asked.

  Greg got up from the table and walked over to a nearby drawer where he pulled out another few tablets of frost. “Here, Ma’am.” He placed the tablets down on the table and stood eerily still next to Zoe as she read through.

  The writing was poor at best and illegible at worst, but organized well. Groups had large squares carved into the tablets around their names, and the first entry on the first tablet Greg handed her had a large ‘x’ gouged into the tablet next to her name.

  “Are you using this to mean they cleared the dungeon?” Zoe pointed at the symbol next to the plainly marked ‘human.’

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg answered.

  Zoe looked through the rest of the tablets for another similar marking but found none. Many groups had shown up — and the same two groups had arrived many many times it seemed, if Greg’s tracking could be trusted at least. Some of the people who were marked had names written, others had just vague descriptions. A few were even just markings Zoe couldn’t understand. Some other language, perhaps? Or something Greg used to track people? But not one had cleared the dungeon since that first warrior in shining armour before Eliza’s visit.

  “Nobody else has cleared the dungeon, then? Only the one time?" Zoe asked.

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg answered.

  “And all of these other groups, have they all been human?" Zoe asked.

  “No, Ma’am.” Greg answered.

  “Really? Which ones weren’t human?” Zoe asked.

  Greg pointed to one of the two recurring groups on the tablets with meaningless markings Zoe couldn’t understand.

  “What were they?" Zoe asked. ”Describe them, to me.“

  “They walked on four legs with a long neck.” Greg described.

  “Like a giraffe? You were visited by giraffes?” Zoe asked.

  “I do not know what a giraffe is, Ma’am.” Greg responded.

  Zoe formed a giraffe from her frost and placed it on the table. “Something like this?"

  Greg pressed one of his crystalline stubs into the giraffe and the giraffe Zoe made twisted and churned to better fit what Greg had seen. The body was much stubbier than Zoe had expected, with a neck more like a horse’s than a giraffes. Their neck was attached to the back of their body rather than the front and curved up, letting their head almost seem to hang over the center of their body, with an arm on either side of their body hanging from just below the head.

  “With a lot of fur, Ma’am.” Greg said.

  “Huh. I have never seen these things before, actually. They’ve come by often? Were they the only non human ones that came by?" Zoe asked.

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg said. “They visit every four years.”

  “Huh.” Zoe sat in silence for a moment, staring at the translucent blue statue on the table in front of her. She’d met things that weren’t human before — goblins and ryz bear hybrids, liches and even animals that seemed somewhat intelligence. But for some reason, in all her fantasy of exploring space, she hadn’t stopped to think about how different the other creatures would physically be. Her fantasies were always humanoid. Beings that stood on two feet, with intelligence matching hers and a culture that gave them their own sense of self.

  “That might throw a wrench into Joe’s plans, huh? Alright, how’s the food problem going? Have you managed to get a better source of food for people? I guess if we’re going to be living here we can try and bring up some animals. I don’t know if they’d be happy in the freezing cold here so maybe we’d have to start by making farmland for them.” Zoe rambled.

  “Development on the creatures you saw last time has continued. We have bred them to be much larger now.” Greg said.

  “But they’re still the same bugs?” Zoe asked.

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg said.

  “Yeah I don’t think people are going to want to eat bugs, even if they’re the adventurous type. Alright. Lets see, what else should I check for Joe.” Zoe tapped her foot on the ground as she scratched her chin.

  Greg stood in silence, his body unmoving as he waited for Zoe.

  “Ah. The people who have returned. They seem peaceful? Have they left any messages, asked for anything? Is there anything else you can think of that I should know about them?” Zoe asked.

  “They do not communicate much. They arrive, and traverse our dungeon before they leave. I do not know their purpose.” Greg said.

  “They’re probably just from some kingdom or something and wanting to check on the progress here. How long ago was it that this group showed up last?" Zoe pointed to the group that wasn’t human.

  “Two years ago, Ma’am.” Greg said.

  “So they'll be back in a few years then, okay. Alright. I tell you what Greg, I’ll leave a message for them this time.” Zoe summoned a notebook and pen to write.

  Greetings travellers, I’m the owner of this dungeon and I’m interested in meeting you if we can arrange a date to converse about your frequent visits. Please leave a message with Greg if you’re interested, thank you.

  Zoe ripped out the page from her notebook, folded it up and handed it to Greg. “Here, the next time they come back, give them this. I’ll see if I’m able to get some kind of long distance communication set up before they come back again so you can notify me when they do but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it in time. Make sure you get a response back from them and give it to me, I’m not sure when I’ll be back again but I’ll try and stop in at least every year from now on, alright?”

  Greg took the note and placed it on the table. “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Good. Alright. Then with that I’m gonna head back to Abyllan, alright? I’ll be back probably soon with some more people to help figure out the food problem. And remember, this note only goes to these people, alright?” Zoe tapped on the tablet of frost on the names she couldn’t read.

  “Yes Ma’am.” Greg said as Zoe Cosmic Leaped back into space towards Abyllan.

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