The weeks flew by in Foizo as Zoe relaxed with the cats and sent message after message to Emma. Most were just ‘the’ written on a small slip of paper, but a handful of them were written as ‘teh' or a mash of scribbles that Zoe could see somehow being construed as ‘the.’ Some of the letters were just outdated notes Emma had taken as she watched the mana patterns.

  Emma made some respectable progress on recreating the Sending skill herself, but even for Zoe with all of her experience it took almost a full week to be successful. For Emma who was much less competent at recreating mana patterns — and who needed to take much more frequent breaks at that, Zoe suspected it might be a several month long process.

  But that was just the break she needed after all of the hectic chaos she’d been dealing with in recent memory. Zoe chuckled to herself at the thought of having some peace and quiet as she thought about the upcoming visit with the council in a few days. Hectic chaos seemed to just be a part of her life, all of the time.

  Or maybe it wasn’t, but it was a lot easier to remember than the slow moments. She thought back to Bruce in the capital. Was he alright? Were his two bunnies okay? Zoe hoped they were. They didn’t live too close to the wall but they were on the south side of town so Zoe found herself a little concerned. Maybe she’d check in on him whenever she got back to the capital.

  At some point she’d need to, she knew. There were few other resources as great for getting to her seventh class as the dungeons in the capital. And that was something she still wanted to do. The whole purpose of her sixth class right now was to have something competent to get her there.

  And she still hadn’t managed to find the time to experiment with the skills. The light magic had proved at least somewhat adequate in the capital, to fend off against the darkness. But there were far more capable light mages and her mana was almost always better spent on healing or using her aura. Maybe if the skills were higher level, but as it turned out an emergency was not a great time to experiment with and level her weakest skills.

  Once Emma had learned her Sending skill, and the whole arrangement with her dungeon the moon was sorted out, Zoe decided she was going to take a few days to experiment with all the new skills her class offered her. They seemed so exciting, and at least in the few moments she’d had to play with them, they seemed fun.

  And the class had three affinities too! Zoe hadn’t even realized what a boon that was when she first took the class. With the majority of her skills being general skills, affinities — something Zoe had no idea how to begin to recreate, were by far the most important class skills she could get. Once she’d stolen all the skills Arcane Watch had to offer, she’d be left with three skills that the class offered her. That was incredible, most would only give her one or maybe two affinities. Less than half of her skill slots for each class were actually used for anything important.

  But Arcane Ward had three! Were there any classes that would give her five affinities? Fill all of her class skill slots with affinities and boost all of her magic beyond what anybody else could do? Why not, Zoe thought. She had the time to try and figure it out.

  Though, she couldn’t think of any other combinations that would give her a fourth affinity, let alone five. Maybe if she found a physical mana hybrid class with two elements and all with separate affinities? Did that even exist? At that point, the system would probably just give her an Elemental affinity that covered multiple of the affinities.

  The days raced by and before Zoe knew it, she was standing outside the council building with Joe for yet another visit with the council. Did other people get brought in for meetings with them as often as she did? Business owners, carpenters or contractors for expanding the walls? Zoe didn’t spend much time watching the council building — on the contrary, she tried to avoid the place as much as she could.

  “There’s no royals today, Zoe. It’ll just be us.” Joe said.

  “Oh, really? I thought you’d need royal approval for this.” Zoe said.

  “We’ve already got it. We’ve got a list of agreements we need you to sign and then we need to discuss some different aspects of this process, but as long as nothing gets too far out of expectations, Diana will be able to give the go ahead.” Joe said.

  “Diana’s back?” Zoe asked.

  Joe nodded. “She came back last night.”

  “Well that’s good news, at least. Foizo’s a bit safer with a royal guard around and if they don’t need her at the capital then I guess things are going well.” Zoe said.

  Joe nodded as he brought Zoe into the building, past the woman at the front counter and up the gaudy stairs at the back of the building. He stopped outside the door to the single long room on the upper floor and looked to Zoe. “You ready?"

  “I think so.” Zoe said.

  Joe opened the door and brought Zoe in. There were fewer people than the last time she came, though that made sense, she thought. Migrating some willing participants to the moon was a little less important of a discussion than the capital of their kingdom being attacked by an unknown mass of destruction. Joe showed Zoe her seat and then took his seat at the third chair on the right of the table.

  The meeting itself was quite boring, in Zoe’s opinion. A lot of paperwork to read through and sign, some of which protecting the city against her going on a murderous rampage in her dungeon. Some of which protecting Zoe if anything were to go wrong outside of her control. Most of the paperwork was revenue and tax related though, which Zoe hadn’t even thought of beforehand.

  Zoe was offered several different compensation options for their use of the dungeon. She could take a cut of the taxes levied from within the dungeon, charge her own fees for property, sell land or services by the dungeon denizens, take a cut of transportation fees to and from the dungeon, the list continued on. In the end, they settled on Zoe just taking a small percentage of the taxes levied within the dungeon with plans for later taking payment in the form of mana for the dungeon when they had some means of harvesting, storing and using all of the mana they’d get.

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  Perhaps the most offensive part of the meeting was when the council tried to get Zoe to sign a contract prohibiting her from telling others that she owned the dungeon. They didn’t want her to talk about owning a dungeon, they didn’t want her to share what she could do in the dungeon, that the denizens respected or could talk to her. They wanted to push Foizo on the Moon as being a strange dungeon that had formed on the moon on its own, as some random happenstance.

  Zoe had no plans to go around bragging about her being the owner of the dungeon, but the secrecy was offensive itself. Not being able to talk about what she’s done to people who she cared about, not being able to share the things she was proud of was offensive enough. But adding on to that she would live forever, and never be able to share that with anybody? And who knows how many more contracts she’d be signing with similar terms, only to never be able to share another word with anybody?

  No, she made it clear that if they wanted to have access to her dungeon, then she couldn’t end up beholden to any magically binding non disclosure agreement. It took a bit of arguing, but in the end the council didn’t seem willing to give up access to her dungeon for a secret that wouldn’t be kept either way.

  The meeting took several hours, and wasn’t even done by the time Zoe was permitted to leave. The rest of the members stayed behind to discuss the finer details that Zoe wasn’t needed for — like the exact fees they’d charge, how they’d solve the problem of the cold, what Joe’s responsibility would be in the dungeon.

  Zoe could have stayed, but had as much interest in discussing the finer details of taxation with the council as she did with watching caterpillars excrete waste on the road. She shook her head. Watching caterpillars poop on the road was something she had done one day in her boredom. Sitting in on a council meeting to discuss the exact colour scheme they wanted for their new travel building was even less interesting.

  All they asked was that she stick around town to be ready to take a small group up to her dungeon when they finalized their plans. A simple enough request in Zoe’s opinion, and days more passed by before Joe arrived at Zoe and Emma’s home. He knocked on the small cat door that lead to their private room and stuck his head through it. “You really need to install a proper door on this room, you know?"

  Zoe and Emma teleported out to the hallway and Emma laughed. “No that’s the whole point, Joe!” Emma said. “The cats can’t be chased in there by guests we have over.”

  Joe raised an eyebrow. “Guests?” He asked.

  “Yeah! We totally have guests over, Joe. You’re here right now.” Emma said.

  “And I’m gonna chase the cats in there?” Joe asked.

  “You just tried to infiltrate their safe space moments ago. It’s a very important wall, Joe. Maybe you should just get some teleportation of your own, you know? You ever think about that? Ever think about how maybe walking everywhere really stinks? Huh?" Emma poked at Joe’s shoulder with her index finger as she spoke. ”Walky boy. Yeah. That’s right.“

  Joe rolled his eyes. “In actual news, Zoe, we’re ready to get started on work up in the dungeon. So we’d like to get going as soon as you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now, right?” Zoe looked at Emma. “You all good?"

  “Oh, are you coming too?” Joe asked.

  Emma shook her head. “No, we’ve just been really trying to get the mana patterns for the sending skill jammed into my brain these past few days so I can hopefully still practice while Zoe’s gone.” She summoned a bundle of papers covered in what appeared to be meaningless scribbles to Zoe but supposedly made plenty of sense to Emma. “Got all this so just gonna keep practicing when I feel like it while Zoe’s up there.”

  “You’re not coming back right away, Zoe?" Joe asked.

  “No, I’ll stick around and help out. May as well.” Zoe shrugged.

  “Alright, well then lets get going. The group’s already waiting at the council building.” Joe said.

  “See ya Emma,” Zoe said as she grabbed Joe’s hand. “Give the cats lots of extra love for me while I’m gone, alright?"

  Emma smiled and nodded as Zoe Cosmic Leaped Joe and herself outside to the city proper. They walked through the streets to the council building where a small group of people were gathered just outside. One was a woman on the council that Zoe didn’t know personally, but four were just normal people it seemed. Labourers of some kind, maybe? Assistants?

  All of them were wearing warm clothes, thick puffy pants and heavy jackets with wool hats covering their heads and scarves wrapped around their necks. A sense of nervousness and anxiety paired with an equal amount of excitement radiated from the group. Along with a vague sense of discomfort — which Zoe took to be from the warmth of their clothes as sweat dripped from their faces.

  Zoe grabbed Joe’s hand and Cosmic Leaped them the rest of the way up to the group. “Hey, I’m supposed to taxi you up to the moon apparently?"

  “You’re all sure this is safe?” One of the workers asked, a middle aged woman at just over level two hundred to Zoe’s Identify. A worker, though Zoe questioned how much those labels really meant anyway.

  “No,” Joe said. “We’re not. We’ve explained the risks to you all ahead of time. Zoe has made this journey several times now, with several passengers. I have been there personally. But we can’t guarantee safety.”

  The woman nodded, her nervousness and excitement growing in kind. “Okay. Okay. This is kind of exciting, huh?”

  “Yes, it is.” The councilwoman said. “But the sooner we get moving the sooner we can settle in to our roles. Are we all ready to get moving?"

  When everybody gave their approval, the councilwoman looked to Zoe. “Then if you would, please move us to the dungeon.”

  “Alright, I’ll need all of you to hold on to me. You’ll need to take your gloves off for this, but I’d recommend taking off all your warm clothes and wearing something a little lighter and more comfortable anyway. It will be very cold in the dungeon, but you’ll have time to get into some warm clothes before I kick you out into the cold, alright?” Zoe asked, rolling her sleeves up and holding her arms out. “Most important though is to make sure you hold on to me and do not let go at all. If you need a break, speak up. But if you let go while we are moving, you could die.”

  The group nodded, and Zoe let them take a moment to strip out of their heavy clothes and store them away in their storage items. Then they grabbed onto Zoe’s outstretched arms one by one. Thick earth rose up from around Zoe and wrapped around everybody’s body, squeezing their hands into Zoe’s arms so they couldn’t let go even if they wanted to in a momentary lapse in judgment. Moments later, Zoe chuckled at the awe flooding through the group as they hurtled through space towards the moon.

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