“Why is the backlash happening to you anyway? I’ve cast several new spells, including ones you taught me and didn’t get any backlash,” Jacobs demanded, while giving me the stink eye.

  “I’m kind of brute forcing the spells,” I admitted. “When I taught you them, I basically just read out the instructions from the spell’s page in my interface on how to do it.”

  “And you keep doing it?” he asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I? I’m figuring out new spells, giving me more options! More power! Muhahaha”

  “With this many spells, the patterns start to become kind of obvious…” Voice said while sitting with Darksider and me. The others had gone off to clear some of the floor's five chambers, while the three of us had settled in for a discussion on spell casting as we were seeing it. Daisy had opted to stick with us and was right now exploring some of the healers' forums for advice on how to be better.

  “It really does seem like if I just swap this bit out for this bit.. I'd get…” Darksider’s voice trailed off as I saw blood seeping from his eyes and ears. “Ow… that is not fun… but Burning Touch is nice to have…”

  “Daisy? Would you mind?”

  “Oh?” She looked over at Darksider and rolled her eyes. “Jacobs told me to call any of you who does that, 'idiot'. So Idiot!” she waved her hand in his direction and cast a heal on him, and then did the same to Voice. “You are also an idiot.”

  I looked at Voice, who was suffering from similar backlash. “Shocking Grasp,” he grinned.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to learn some new spells?” I asked our healer.

  “Who would heal me?” she replied, with a grin. “Nah, Jacobs showed me a couple of his other spells. Snowball and Firebolt are enough for now; the damage reduction from the healing set makes them a huge waste of mana.”

  “We should get you more debuff and crowd control spells. Reducing damage should be more mana efficient than just healing it…” I mused.

  “Or Buff spells, if there are any, loading us up before combat,” Voice suggested.

  “There is a forum post about that. In the Inferno school, there is a spell called Innerfire. It’s a self-cast, though… increases natural regeneration of mana and health.”

  “I should look into that one,” nodded Voice.

  “Whahey bitches! I’m back!” a voice from a small man announced near the teleporter pad.

  “You hear something?” Darksider asked.

  “No…” I replied.

  “I thought I heard a whiney little bitch, but it must have been my imagination,” Voice said.

  “Haters gonna hate,” said our recently resurrected brawler.

  “Wasn’t hating before, but I am now,” Daisy said, standing up. “Now I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for hours.”

  We headed out, picked an unexplored direction and headed out into the corridors of Five. We’d had a couple of good fights, with half the party singing ‘Shake It Off,’ Darksider showing off with his new pistol, having claimed one of the Deagles we had looted and we had just finished solving a puzzle involving bouncing beams of light around a maze, when we got the call from the others about calling it a night and meeting up to share the loot. When we had discussed it earlier, it was agreed that the fairest thing would be to do the loot split with everyone there and then those who wanted to keep playing could reform a new party.

  We met back up at the stairs to floor Six, and with an air of jubilance, we teleported back up.

  The lone officer who was in the receiving hall was a little surprised to see us coming out of the teleporter, and was even more surprised when we started unloading the loot we had collected.

  “I’m going to need to send for someone,” he said. “We don’t normally get the better quality materials at this time of night.”

  Someone had come running up just as we finished unloading, took one look at the pile, and promptly headed off again.

  She came back a few minutes later with Diane and Calab in tow.

  “You ten sure know how to make a splash…” Diane said, looking at the piles of collected resources.

  “Scarab Chitin?” Calab said, picking up one of the smaller ones. “You went down to Floor Six?”

  “What?” Diane exclaimed in surprise. “I was told you were all strong, I hadn’t realised they had meant that strong…”

  “Dante!” Calab called out to a passing porter.

  “Sir?” the porter said, coming over.

  “Get word to the Butchers, Floor Six, today is The Ring. They’ll know what that means.”

  “Yessir.”

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Preferential treatment?” Diane asked Calab with a raised eyebrow.

  “We get better resources from some groups over others…” he grudgingly admitted.

  “So, we have a few things that are on the list, so we add them to the normal loot to be sorted and split?” I asked, unsure of the process for this.

  “Can do, if you want to speed it up, though, we can just process them now and add their value to your totals,” Calab said.

  His eyes went wide when George pulled out half the objects he had acquired from the larger pile. But the look on his face when I pulled the first of the teleporter cores was priceless. The second left him speechless.

  “Are those teleporter cores?” Diane asked from over his shoulder. Calab nodded.

  “Two of them?” she asked, incredulous. He nodded.

  “In working condition?” she asked. He reached out to the other one and then nodded.

  “Want me to send for the Magistrate and Chief?” She asked. With no hesitation, he nodded.

  A lot of the loot was pretty standard, it seemed. The larger chitin pieces, while unexpected, weren’t cause for much commotion. The amount in our pile was considerably more than they were used to seeing, though. Our growing collection of crafting crystals and new gear was assessed and then returned to us. The valuations for the latter were added to our side of the totals sheet. The teleporter cores and their high values had been added to the top of theirs.

  The Chief Engineer turned up, with a pair of tired-looking engineers in tow, their eyes lit up in excitement upon seeing the cores.

  The Magistrate and Paul turned up just as the assessment was completed, and after seeing the totals, moved aside to discuss something.

  “The total for your share, after excluding the equipped items, is 5,180. Would you like that as gold or in goods?” Calab asked.

  We took it in gold. Making each of us 518 gold better off than when we went in. I looked at the 608 gold coin balance on my inventory screen. I was tempted to buy myself a coin purse to put them into, just to hear them jingle.

  George and Daisy were in an earlier timezone, so for them it was even dinner time. Voice, Darksider and G joined them as none of them had any plans to be up early the next day. Those five disappeared into the teleporter room to go back to floor five, while the rest of us moved out. One of the engineers caught up to me and invited me to join them for the installation of the new core.

  I couldn’t resist and found myself escorted into one of the facility's underground chambers, with its large collection of cooling arrays.

  “We’re below the central chamber here,” the Chief said. “My predecessor was sure it was set up so a single system could be used to teleport deeper into the facility through one set of teleporters and out into the world from a different set. But he was never able to prove it. Apprentice, show our visitor what you have learnt.”

  The youngest of the engineers approached the large device in the middle of the room and bowed to it. He turned and approached a power relay. With two hands, he pulled the handle, and the room suddenly dropped into silence.

  Returning to the machine, he pulled open the cover to reveal a teleporter core which was dark and clearly dead. He turned to look at the Chief Engineer, who nodded. The Engineer then released the clamps holding the core in place and pulled it out. With reverence, he then carried it over to a shelf which had four other burnt-out ones and space for three more.

  While he carried the dead one, another engineer moved in and inspected the socket the core went into.

  “As part of the installation, we check that no damage has occurred to the connection points,” the Chief explained.

  “Does that happen often?” I asked.

  “No, only once, before my time, but they lost two cores before the cause was realised, so now we always check.”

  I followed the Chief over as he reviewed the check; he nodded at the engineer who had done it. Touched the metal of the casing and then took one of the new cores from the last engineer, leaving him holding the packaging. With practised ease, he slid it into its slot, locked the first clamp in place with a nod and then indicated to the youngest to finish securing the clamps.

  Once all the clamps were in place, the engineer then returned to the relay, checked no one was near the machine, looked at each of the four of us with him in the room to confirm he knew where we were and then pushed the lever back up. The room’s hum returned.

  The four engineers stood with held breaths staring at one of the machines in the room. The lights on it started blinking red, then orange, four went solid green, and the fifth became a blinking green. Relieved sighs came from them all.

  “It is done. The core is recognised and working. Now we must calibrate!” The chief said and led me over to a console against the wall. “Would you mind?” he asked.

  I nodded and touched the screen.

  “Ahhh, Miss Ravenscroft. If the Chief can spare you, the Magistrate requests your presence,” Diane said from the door.

  “My gratitude to you,” the old engineer said, with genuine gratitude in his voice. “You have helped our understanding greatly, I think we have done all we can…”

  Diane escorted me to a small meeting room where the Magistrate and Paul were sitting around a small table, paperwork between them.

  “Please sit,” the Magistrate said. “Would you like some refreshments?”

  “Thank you, but I am good,” I replied as I took the offered seat. He nodded.

  “Calab tells me, one of the major motivators for you and your guild is getting a Teleporter core. Would you mind explaining to me why?” The Magistrate asked.

  “Certainly,” I replied, I didn’t think it was a secret. “My guild’s home base needs one to give us easy access to the mainland. I have a quest from its intelligence to get the place fully up and running, and this is one of the steps.” I saw a small smile creep into Paul’s face.

  “So more of you will be coming looking for them and other resources we can supply for your guilds?”

  “I imagine so. We are new to this area, but if my own quests are typical, I would think it’s a safe bet we will need more cores, communication hub equipment, raw resources… Once more, Voyagers find out about the Delve, you will find groups coming here just to challenge each other on who can get deeper,” I said.

  He nodded. “I have an unusual request of you. Paul indicates you are in good standing with his leadership, and you have benefited my own people greatly with your assistance with the teleporter network and set a record for the resources pulled on the first day as a Delver. Paul has convinced me that it is in the interests of Toreck to open trade with Landing and to open up our Delve to your fellow Voyagers. Your words helped reinforce that. To facilitate this, I'd like you to travel back to Landing and get their Teleporter up and running. My engineers tell me the system is picking up Landing as a potential destination, but that the return is offline?”

  “It looks that way. It was the same for Toreck before we got the teleporter core up and running, and now here is showing green for both receipt and transmission,” I nodded.

  “With the second core you brought up, I want you to go to Landing and get their Teleporter up and running. In exchange, I’ll give you the next available core for your own use. Is this acceptable?”