After signing the contract with Viket and the high-ranked Hadruga, Azotreh and co. returned to their main body. The orc champion would return to the museum to keep doing its job while they began the arduous process of organizing.
Or, rather, leaving that to Nicholas and Errazorrus. Nicholas was a neat freak, and Errazorrus was a dragon; both had problems with hoarding, so it was their job to deal with that. Instead, Azotreh wanted to work on their techniques.
Fuzem didn't have much going on, so Azotreh had her working with the dungeon.
The rest had cleared their minds, and with more active focus, they began to reshape the dungeon from the ground up. Closing and filling former rooms that weren't used, carving more channels for ants and other small monsters, and attempting to get monsters other than the ants with the Broodmaster title.
With tasks set, they returned to work.
Nicholas was sorting through an odd pile of materials. Mostly plants and fungi, but with some slime cores set on top, when he discovered a gold piece of paper and text written in crimson ink. It was clearly the same kind of paper Asergia had used to forge their contract, and that Hadruga had just used to create the new one.
[Confirm Contract:
The Dungeoneer's Guild can seek out your dungeon.
The Dungeoneer's Guild can communicate with you through the power of your chosen Dungeon Patron.
The Dungeoneer's Guild will provide resources to assist in the survival of your dungeon.
The Dungeoneer's Guild will not interfere in the activities of the prime avatar Azotreh Nightshade.
Penalty for Non-Compliance: Revoked Dungeoneer's Rights/Revoked ability to open gates on Aostea.
Would you like to officially recognize this contract under the power of the Skill System?]
Nicholas called over Errazorrus with his aura. While the pair were still sharing a body, stretched and gelatinous as it was, Errazorrus was still technically across the room.
The two connected forms of the duo appeared similar to Azotreh, though Errazorrus had dark scales around the eyes and a crown of ivory horns around his head. Nicholas was simply paler than the tanned Azotreh with sharp green eyes.
Nicholas' arm extended and bent backwards to show the contract to Errazorrus while his other arm split and continued to organize the items. Errazorrus visibly shivered at the display.
"How do you shape your body so naturally? Even Fuzem has a harder time shaping the slime."
"She knows what a slime looks like. I just know what's most useful. Now read the contract."
Errazorrus looked away to read over the crimson text. He knew instinctively that it was written with prana, rather than the mana ink used by Hadruga. Likely written with the creator's own blood.
But the terms didn't seem too bad except for the first term. They could seek out the dungeon? That seemed like a problem and a half simply waiting to happen. Especially considering that Errazorrus had a small memory of the dungeoneer's guild. More specifically, a fragmented memory from their red dragon eye of destroying a branch after it denied the dragon delving rights.
It had high rankers, and true ones at that. If the memory was correct, just the small branch director was at least lead-rank. The dragon had been gold at the time, so it wasn't a problem to kill the director, but it would be a huge problem now.
It said that they wouldn't interfere with the prime avatar, but that didn't mean they wouldn't mess with the dungeon.
"Where did this contract come from?" He asked Nicholas.
"Before we were out of it, the second blue slime champion discovered that party that killed us as the puma." Errazorrus didn't like how casually Nicholas talked about death, but didn't mention it. Nicholas continued, "The sage with the fire powers left his bag of holding on the ground, and the slime grabbed it. The bag was left behind since we can't put those in our inventory."
Errazorrus's eyes narrowed as he spoke, "How do you know he was the sage?"
"He might have been the strategist, but the records room has our memories. While I was waiting for the orc to return, I watched our first fight with them."
"Not that. You're from another planet. How do you know standard party dynamics?"
Nicholas turned to Errazorrus with a cold gaze, "I was placed in the body of a child. I had to adapt quickly. I've been here for eight months now, and while Azotreh didn't learn a lot from the scientists, they have plenty of information. Like how this world has five seasons and fifteen months in a year. Fifteen. Not that we've seen any of them."
Nicholas returned to the materials and continued to sort them, while Errazorrus only managed a silent nod. He hadn't noticed how much their quartet was struggling. With his attention mostly on piecing together his fractured memories from the varied draconic parts implanted into Azotreh, he didn't pay enough attention.
Errazorrus distracted himself from the guilt building in his chest to check over the contract again. He then grinned, having realized something obvious. He pulled Azotreh from wherever they were to sign their name.
[Contract Complete]
[You have become a provisional member of the Dungeoneer's Guild]
[You have gained title: Contractually Obligated I]
Azotreh returned to whatever they were up to after a moment, and Errazorrus went back to his own task a moment later.
They had returned to the edge of Nightshade after a recent argument. The team was splitting at the seams, and Alabast wasn't a fan.
He'd worked with Maria and Leo for only gods know how long. They'd come up as adventurers together, and when they'd decided to help the twins and accept the quest to show the world to Mason, he never expected that it would put their friendship in jeopardy.
The twins were always quiet, apparently looking for an absent third sibling. Mason had grown close to Leo and Maria after another tirade from Maria, and Alabast felt more like an outsider in his own team each day.
[You have successfully forged a contract with Azotreh Nightshade.]
He almost dismissed the window on instinct. His style of combat made sudden system windows common. But then he actually read this one, realizing he hadn't lit anything on fire recently, or charmed them for that matter.
[The Dungeoneer's Guild is grateful to you. Harold Crimbrew will reward you when you return to the branch in Nyunhur.]
[The Black Dragon Dungeon God has granted you a boon!]
[Fire-based attacks you create will now inflict the Acid-Burn affliction.]
[Your familiar: Volcanic Serpent has gained the ruby blessing of the Black Dragon Dungeon God]
Finally. He'd wondered what was taking the kid so long. Alabast wanted to jump for joy, but didn't want to draw attention. His entire party was looking for Azotreh, and he couldn't let them know that he had a way to speak to the young dungeon.
The blessing itself wouldn't likely give much to his oversized familiar. As the blessing of a dungeon god, it would probably only grant effects that improved dungeons or dungeon monsters. Not his big snake. But every small bit of influence would help it on its next rank advancement.
He knew he couldn't call Harold here, so he decided to make a trip back to Nyunhur. It'd be good for the team. Mason would see his family, Leo and Maria could have some time to themselves, and the twins… he wasn't sure what they'd do.
Azotreh remained within the empty space beyond their soul. The towering mountain with two bright sparks in the distance, and the horizon painted in shades of gold, crimson, blue, pink, and black. They didn't know where exactly this was. They knew the inside of their soul realm and the inside of their core realm. They knew on instinct what they were and what purpose they served. But this place… they didn't know.
It was still clearly part of them, a facet of their existence, but they didn't know how it fit into the puzzle they still barely understood.
They walked across the glass-like surface that composed the ground, still a shifting mass of uncountable colors beneath a dark plane. The lights had grown brighter after their ascension to E-Grade, yet otherwise, the place hadn't changed much in the grade jump.
They weren't here to admire the colors, though; they didn't have time. Maybe some day there'd be a point where they could simply watch the colors flare and dim. A day when there wasn't another impending threat. But today was not that day.
They were here for the small orb floating in the poten sea. There was a second somewhere else, but this was the one they cared about right now. It shone a deep crimson, with a murky black pattern across its surface. The pattern endlessly shifted, blotches of shadow expanding and constricting, appearing and vanishing. It was beautiful, in its own way.
They couldn't actually touch the sphere. It was simply a representation of something grander, and just as one couldn't touch the space around them, Azotreh could not touch the sphere.
The sphere was the conceptual nucleus for their impurity-devouring technique. They had pushed it to Crimson-20 before passing out, which was its maximum threshold before the nucleus needed to be pushed further again.
Before, they'd used Krelli's Nucleic Brew to create and advance the nucleus. But they didn't want to do that again, at least, not until they could completely cleanse the residue left in its wake. And until they could make it themselves.
The contract with the rabbit-kin should help them learn to make the potion. But they needed to figure out cleansing before then.
Naturally, there was another way to push through that threshold than the potion. They had thought it was through simple usage, the same way that skills hit thresholds and insights or effort could push through them. But they weren't even similar.
They had a harder push to break the threshold, and they had an idea of how.
They returned to their soul and found the pools that represented their resources. The pools had been hidden until their soul expanded after the discovery of their core. But now, they sat as small springs around the white obelisk at the center of the realm. The true pool was beneath the ground, but the spring could be siphoned, which was Azotreh's plan.
Mana had done a lot for them, but clearly wasn't everything. Most of the damage they sustained impacted their mana, but still damaged their prana. Their muscles and movement used mana primarily due to their strange composition, but they still used backbone. Willpower was what allowed them to project and control their aura, to constrict it and reinforce it against attacks. Intuition and empathy were still peculiar and deeply unknown, but were valuable nonetheless. Fuzem had found that out first-hand.
So, Azotreh mentally pulled on the six of them, from their small wellsprings. A stream of each to intertwine like a braid, but to sharpen to a point at their tip. A drill.
Maybe a heavy blunt force would be better, but Azotreh liked the drill. It was something they'd never seen before Nicholas had been placed into their soul. Shovels, fine. But a drill was made with the purpose of breaking hard things.
It was easier than they expected to weave the six forms of energy together. Red, yellow, blue, white, black, and gold. They pulled the resources from their soul and returned to the orb. Spinning the tip on instinct, they pressed it against the orb.
Unlike attempting to hold the sphere, the drill was able to contact it. It had no effect, but Azotreh kept spinning it. The tip didn't break, but the drill also hadn't broken through yet. It was a stalemate, but one that the orb would lose. When the drill head finally broke, Azotreh just went back and grabbed more of the energies.
Prana regenerated the slowest, at a rate of 30 units per hour. If the pool was empty, it would take just over four days for prana to fully regenerate. Even so, they could expend one unit every time the drill broke.
It took an hour for a small crack to appear in the surface of the orb, but that crack became the weakness that eventually broke the outer shell and released a pulse of crimson energy.
The resources used to construct the drill fell apart and right into the poten sea, but Azotreh didn't care much. The nucleus was pulsing red as its shell had been removed. It was slowly growing outward, only increasing in size by half a centimeter in radius, but still visibly expanding.
[Congratulations! You have increased the maximum power of your Technique Nucleus. Your technique can now advance to Crimson-0030]
[You have gained a new technique! Nucleic Drill (Crimson-0001)]
[You have- ERROR]
[Skill gains result in possible overload. Do you wish to continue? Y/N]