The Azeria Mountain Dungeon had settled down into a new pace as the season rolled on while Kazue, Moriko, and Bridgette traveled slowly after their ret trials. With so many different paths and challehere was a stant flow of people seeking to challehemselves and possibly make it rich.

  This happened less often than it might seem that it should, simply because people often found the process a little addig, especially those ined toward bat to begin with. Even without the one-shot safety provided by Kazue's boon, a dungeon was often the best pce to push oneself. Uhe dungeon had some reason to not fight fair, a person should be able to reach a p the dungeohey are tested by the fights but not overwhelmed. This was where the thrill was, the exhiration and adrenaline of bat in a somewhat trolled enviro. And that bat came with rewards.

  The people who wanted more of that thrill ofte most of their funds in improving their gear and supplies. Ented gear would never make up for a serious ck of skill or power, but it could provide a mueeded edge. A seasoned warrior with a random stick was more dangerous than a fresh-out-of-training soldier who has been handed a legendary holy bde of antiquity, partly because he cks the power and experieo hahe bde properly. But given that you have two people of equal strength and skill, preparation and equipment make the difference. And luck. That one was hard to at for.

  All of this lified by the dungeon's annou of a tour in the early spring. The exact date was not yet announced, but it would be about a month after the snow melted in the region, to give everyone a ce to get there in time, and that approximation should be enough to let most people know when to start traveling.

  Qualification was simple; State your io joiour and clear the dungeon's bat path, ohe dungeon annouhat they had grown their st zoil after the tour. Also, you o not die on your way down; all tour entrants had to have the dungeon's safety in pce. Entrants would have priority pt finning their delves, to ehe maximum number of possible petitors.

  Per the dungeon's annou, prizes would be awarded based on performance, plus half the reward value of the qualifying delve would be reserved and added to the value of the tour prize. This would ehem to award rger, more ized prizes on an individual basis. Should an announced entrant not make it to the arena or otherwise not participate in the event, the reserved rewards would be forfeited, uhe entrant triggered the dungeon's safety. This was to keep people from g to be entrants for the priority delving slot while providing an exception for those who failed while sincerely pushing themselves into risky situations.

  Spectators only o clear the non-bat path as arance fee, and they would still receive their normal value of treasure from overing the challenges.

  One had until the start of the event to clear the final zo was generous in one sense, but it also put the st-minute party at a disadvantage for the first day's events as they would be tired from the ret boss fight.

  Of all qualifyirants, the ones whose strength stood out clearly would be pulled from the pool to be seeded at appropriate tiers. This ecifically to enable everyone else a ce to participate in the lowest tier or two without being immediately overshadowed.

  Ohey khe number of potential entrants, a final decision would be made oarting size and number of rounds/tiers. The pool of entrants would then be whittled down through preliminary bouts. They would be randomly paired and then duel up to three times. The first person to win two rounds of their duel won that match. Both people would then be assigned another duel parthough this time with the dungeon doing their best to match up simir skill and power levels based on the previous duels.

  This would tiil a person lost three matches, at which point they would be out. Wherants had been reduced to the number of avaible starting slots, the preliminaries would be over. But power and skill alone would not be enough, one had to have trol araint. Killing your oppo during the preliminaries was an automatic disqualification with a forfeit of reserved treasure value.

  While they anticipated the possibility that there might be some fatalities during the main fights, the multi-round/matature of the preliminaries made it extra important to disce killing blows, as the loser would also automatically be disqualified for no longer having the bes of Kazue's boon.

  They also wao disce bloodthirstiness in general while not making people unwilling to push themselves, so they created a different rule for the main fights. There were to be no deliberate kills, subject to the dungeon's judgment. Acts might happen if one batant's guard slipped at the wrong moment, but if there was a clear path to victory then the person with the advantage o proceed with patiend restraint, and the dungeon reserved the right to step in and decre a winner even if the losing side was managing to barely stand.

  There was an unspoken implication here, for those who could see it. If it looked like one person was barely standing and the dungeon did not intervehen the dungeon sensed some potential left in the batant still. This did not mean that the potential would be called forth, merely that it was there. Those who had witnessed a surge of desperate strength and power before would be cautious in this sario.

  To aodate the possibly very rge number of simultaneous fights during the prelimihe dungeoself a schedule for expanding the size of the arena itself as well as brang corridors leading te number of training rooms and fighting rings, with the occasional eg corridor between the brahis work cost as much mana as aire zone for a simpler dungeon, but their yout was making new zones costlier, so it made a smaller impa their growth speed. Also, after their initial growth using smaller designs, Mordecai and Kazue both wanted rger zones.

  Aside from the enjoyment of the creative exercise, there were practical bes to this design philosophy. Larger, more plicated areas both allowed more simultaneous delvers in a given zone and slowed the retive progress of invaders. One could grow out an earlier zone, but the more oed from the inal design, the harder and more expe was. They had branched out as many 'duplicate' paths for the first three floors of the non-bat path as they felt ractical, but eaore than the previous ohe bat path had not gotten the same treatment as there were still only so many bosses for each zone, which was the real bottleneck of creating worthy challenges.

  As expensive as all of this teral growth was, they fully expected it to pay for itself over time. The tour itself should be a positive for the arena before even ating for all the extra delving that would be happening because of it.

  Their sewer was being a rich sourana as well, even if it was the other pce they were expandie the cost. The small squads of Trionean soldiers were stantly training and progressing through the floors, and the first several squads had Mordecai's direct supervision once each squad had their basic teamwork down. The step after that was the inter-squad teamwork. A normal army didn't have to work this way, and guardsmen worked on a much smaller scale.

  The patterns were fairly simple, but coordination and trust were hard. Team A1 cleared and secured a room, Team B1 went past them to secure the room, Team A2 came up to provide support and a rger watch group for A1, Team B2 did the same for Team B1, and Team C1 passed through both rooms to secure the one, and so on. This left twenty people guarding ea after it was cleared.

  But ohat pattern was down, they had to deal with brang corridors and keeping unications clear about which branches had how many teams and who had further chambers on their branch that needed clearing.

  This required designating runners and making reasonably accurate maps. There were also only so many teams, so eventually the rearmost team o move up to the front and clear another room, though it would be the 2-group that did the clear and the 1-group that would provide support.

  This teamwork was tested wherever the squads were when the refresh cycle hit and the various creatures respawned in the same rooms where they died and immediately attacked. Mordecai wasn't certain that this was how Deidre's dungeon was going to do the respawns, but this was the default behavior if the core didn't direct otherwise, and it would be difficult for Dimitri to try coordinating any specific ges.

  These exercises wouldn't work for the rger zones in the Azeria Mountain Dungeon or for any enviroal dungeon, but from what they had been able to glean from Deidre, it didn't seem she had any rge spaces like this. Of course, this might ge by the time the ter-invasion kicked off, but most of the floors should be like this.

  The possible variation from the avaible information was also why the soldiers who died once were put into groups to do 'normal' delves. They he experience of seeing the breadth of what a dungeon could do, lest they bee pt in their expectations.

  There was a very noticeable 'mortality' rate in the soldiers doing the sewer training. Mordecai did not attempt to modify the bat or trap challenges ohey were set, including not intervening in a fight that was swinging one way or ahe inhabitants down here were actively trying to kill the soldiers onbat started, but at least they were not actively trying to hunt the soldiers. Yet. That training would e ter.

  While the dungeon was setting its new routine and ying out pns for its teral growth, three travelers were making their way closer. Moriko, Kazue, and Ruby were traveling slower than they could have, but despite the restoration of their bodies and mana or chi, their inner spirit was still suffering from having been siphoned off so thhly. They also had three young dragons to train and feed, and feeding that many mouths meant hunting. Fortunately, most of the training was covered by hunting and pying right now, and that worked well with spiritual recovery. Rest alone was not the optimal way of recuperating, it worked best when bined with aionally rid positive life. They still had to take breaks more often than they would have, but the young dragoainly had no issues curling up for a nap, especially Kazue's felinesque dragon, elian Fme.

  This sted until the day before the Autumn Equinox. Moriko and Kazue had left home almost three months ago and they did not want to miss a major holiday away from their husband. It took them a little bit to figure out a figuratioually, they settled with having Moriko carry Ruby in her arms, having Kazue in fox form on Ruby's stomach, and the three hatgs ging to Moriko's pad the hastily rigged padding on her shoulders.

  Then Moriko ran. Her pace was unsteady at first, she'd not tested herself sihey'd started their recovery, but she found her footing pretty quickly. Once her speed was stable, Kazue started fog on the magic provided by her liminal spirit. It was better with edges and borders, but dimensional space was an aspect as well. She used that magic to reach for her home and that other piece of herself, and she pulled on the space between.

  The ground in front of Moriko seemed to shrink, though only in the dire of the dungeon. The tra was nowhere near as strong as Kazue would have liked, but it was enough to make a difference for the first couple of hours. She couldn't hold it for lohan that without over-straining herself.

  Moriko was forced to go off the path in order to follow that straight line, but it didn't matter much to her. She simply let go of her grip on the ground and ran through the air about a foot above it. This push was enough to close the distao the dungeon's territory by mid-afternoon.

  Across the border, she could see Mordecai waiting for them, which was more than enough for a st boost of speed. Kazue leapt into Mordecai's arms while Moriko took a bare moment to set Bridgette down before joining her wife and husband.

  The only thing keeping the trio dispying even a modicum of de was the presence of one amused guest and three agitated baby dragons. Ohe trio could spare a moment to disentangle and breathe, Moriko and Kazue made introdus all around and Mordecai maed his eidolon, Shenlong, to py with the hatgs.

  Shenlong was not a discrete entity maing through Mordecai the way that Takehiko's fairy Kayda was, but he could adepely enough for this sario. That let the three of them escort Ruby to the guest quarters he core with minimal harassment from the over-excited familiars and make several more introdus along the way, including Fuyuko getting to meet Moriko for the first time aing hugged half to death by Kazue's avatar. Fuyuko was, of course, immediately enamored of the dragon hatgs and was quite pleased to think about how jealous Shizoku and Derek were going to be that she got to meet them first.

  There was a lot of socialization to be doil dinner, which was a feast in celebration of the eve of the autumn equinox. Much of it was ed by the familiars, though Moriko was certainly dev her share happily. The dungeo had happened well before diime, and she was happy to be able to taste her food again. Kazue also teased her about being able to finally hold a fork properly again.

  Whehree young dragons curled up by a hearth to sleep with full bellies, Fuyuko was happy to join them and use her ented ring to gossip with her friends, who were indeed rather envious. Shenloled in to keep an eye ogs while the married trio slipped away for a more private celebration.

  As for the nature of that celebration, well, Kazue's cot some inspiration for a few new heated ses for her seven-book series, "The Princess of the Red Rose and her Samurai Septet". Three of the samurai were women, but all were going to be part of the princess's harem and there were so many possible binations avaible for the spicy bits.

  Zagaroth