Mordecai was happy. Not joyous, not gleeful, just that warm sort of happy that comes from a certain kind of contentedness. While it wasn't entirely new to his experiences, this particular contended happiness felt a little different than anything he could recall, and new versions of emotions had become rare experiences for him. And it certainly wasn't that he hadn't felt the various parts of being happy like this before, but it was just a bit different this time around.

By the time he'd first fallen in love through one of his avatars, he'd been a very busy nexus, and never really grew less busy as his levels continued to expand. Part of his mind was always so busy with maintaining the flow of activity and growth, that he'd never really been able to give most of his attention to a lover. Now he was beginning to wonder how deep that love truly had been.

Not that he was quite in love with these two women, but like Moriko, he could feel his affection and warmth growing for both of them and feel those affections being returned. Given all of this, he was pretty certain that it was just a matter of time. He could already tell that Moriko had a habit of resisting these sorts of feelings, while Kazue was much less self-aware about such matters, besides having had no experience; so he wasn't going to pursue or push for more than they were ready to give. Also, he'd never romanced two women at once, so this was new ground.

Mordecai was also just a touch bored. Not bored because he was doing the same thing again, he was bored because he had nothing to do really. That was also rather new. Moriko was out gathering stuff and Kazue was building the nexus; he couldn't help one at all and 'helping' the other at this stage would just be hindering her growth. So, it was time to settle back in for some meditation, as he'd been doing when Kazue had finished her work on the first floor, and they'd begun their training session. It had been fun working with her to see what sort of magic spark she had inside. Almost everyone had something they could do, and hers seemed to suit her well.

At least it had been interesting to see what sort of boon had settled into place for Kazue with their second zone. If you knew the trick, you could see the mana-forms that made up the boons, and even select from several potential boons that were half-formed instead of letting one of them develop on its own in response to your thoughts and actions. Mordecai wanted to teach Kazue how to do this, but he had a couple of reasons not to just yet.

First, she was inexperienced and overly eager to do things 'correctly'. This was a good way to force a boon onto yourself that didn't truly fit, so Mordecai was quite content to see a 'style' type boon develop spontaneously and attach itself to Kazue's side of their core. Naturally, she had a gentle style, and this boon would make it easier for their inhabitants to not harm their delvers as well as make their inhabitants more suitable for non-combat challenges.

Second, there was a rare and special boon Mordecai wanted to see develop for her, and he wasn't certain if it could develop properly if someone knew what they were doing. At the least, it would be harder. Mordecai was quite aware he wouldn't qualify for it even if he wasn't already aware of the boon, but he was pretty certain it would make Kazue very happy. So for now, he told her nothing about these boons.

As for himself, he had also selected a style boon. This was one he had developed before and it would be advantageous here, as it increased their capacity for inhabitants so long as they maintained a path of 'peace' and a path of 'war', though his previous nexus had not been quite as far on the peace scale. But failing to uphold the decision to have two paths could wreck the mana form and make the boon unusable unless you managed to form a new one and push it into place while detaching the old one. This was a painful and tricky process, and Mordecai only ever had to do that once before he learned to be much more careful.

Still, contemplating their boons only ate up so much time.

He could possibly entice Danitsa out of the shadows and into conversation or a card game, but Mordecai could also see the star-furred vixen amusing herself by frustrating his attempts, and he didn't really feel like dealing with her. Besides, he didn't want to interrupt her 'games' and possibly cause her to leave as one of their trickles of mana was coming from her presence. It wasn't anywhere as large as the surge from her hunting the dire rabbits, but her existence radiated much more energy than a common mortal life did. It was just enough to be noticeable, though they thankfully had other sources too, since fox spirits were notoriously fickle.

All spiritual nexuses drew in a small flow of mana and energy from outside their territory, it was part of what made them a 'nexus'. The spiritual part was derived from how many spirits and souls were bound to the core in addition to the primary spiritual entity. Or, well, entities, in this case. Developing an ecology the way that Kazue was already inclined to do enhanced that flow. Additionally, every thing brought in by Moriko or from the small forays done by the dire rabbits brought in a small amount of energy, and everything that was new to them sparked more energy into their core. Which was another reason why he limited how much information he gave to Kazue; the more of his old data that he unlocked and shared, the less energy she would be able to gain from outside materials.

Hopefully, they would have delvers soon, but not too soon. These flows would sustain them for a little while and they had received a solid boost from their first visitors, so they didn't need delvers immediately, but eventually those flows would no longer aid their growth. Delvers would require rewards of course, that was part of the balance of a nexus core's nature.

Mordecai tried to not worry over the fact that Danitsa was also creating a slowly growing debt that would eventually need to be paid off in rewards of some sort.

With his musings about their situation done, Mordecai decided he should focus on himself and settled once more into a cross-legged position on the floor of their central chamber. He focused his attention on his avatar and the trickle of energy from their core trying to supply everything that his body was demanding.

Ozuran was right in calling this avatar not quite cheating. After all, what Mordecai had done was nothing that any other deep, experienced, and somewhat ancient spiritual nexus couldn't do. In fact, merging retired avatars was something lots of older nexus cores did. But sacrificing them all to create just one avatar? He'd never heard of anyone doing such a thing before. After all, in case of a breach, having multiple avatars manifest to defend your core was usually much more useful than one extra powerful one, given how much less a single avatar could do at a time and how inefficient merging more than a handful is.

But Mordecai had done it; had burned through all his avatars to create one new, extremely compact design that had every bit of ability he could extract out of his old ones. And since this was the only avatar he had now, it was the only one that could be manifested. Though he looked human, he actually had just about every ability of every adventuring race out there. This included an alternative form that had a lot of non-human 'additions', giving him the physiology to use the rest of his abilities. Which he wasn't going to use if he could help it. It wasn't just ugly in a way that might be off-putting to others, it was actually rather offensive to his sensibilities. There hadn't been a lot of time, so he'd piled all the various body parts he needed into one mostly symmetrical form, but they really didn't mesh well. If he'd done it with more time available, he could have smoothed it out and taken some time to figure out how to get all the biological parts to function with all of his skills while maintaining a common theme.

Still, even without that 'alternative form', this body's potential exceeded anything he'd had before. He had simultaneous access to every martial and magical skill he'd ever learned, in theory at least. His portion of their core had neither the raw power nor calculating power to fully fuel the potential of this avatar. Still, it should be more than enough to handle most threats he was likely to encounter any time soon. True, he might be stuck here doing nothing but meditating for a little while, but it was so much better than the other options. If Kazue hadn't been here, needing both assistance and company, he'd have lost all of the excess energy he'd brought with them within another day at the most. The strain on Moriko's body from having to try to hold it that long would have also been extremely hard on her.

After that, the only choice would have been to try and hunt out a nexus that truly needed destroying, try to figure out a way to 'mostly' kill the core without actually shattering it, and then try to take the core over before it broke. And he estimated that they would have had only a little over a year in which to do so before the bonds he'd used to tie himself to Moriko would have forced him into permanently becoming some sort of familiar for her. He still wasn't sure how that would have turned out. He might have manifested as a tiny dragon or she might have been able to manifest him as a full eidolon, or several other options. But one way or another, that would certainly have made for a very different relationship. He found that he was quite pleased with how things had turned out, especially compared to his other options.

Kazue hummed to herself as she set about integrating the plants and materials Moriko had returned with, and filled the first floor with the scent of growing things: The deep green herbaceous scent of shrubs, the light, delicate scents of flowers, the lightly musty scent of small mosses. She even made the fairies redolent of florals, as another hint that they were the flowers in her puzzle. This also helped camouflage the scent of the hidden caches of incense around that first floor that she had as additional rewards. There were a few herby plants that could be harvested, but nothing particularly rare or potent yet. She hoped that Moriko would be able to find some eventually so that she could supplement the incense with something a bit more thematic.

Then it was time to design and implement the first room on her second floor. This floor had a different set of complications to work on. First, she needed to separate 'reward' crystals from landscape and puzzle crystals. The distinction to identify crystals designated as rewards was that they were already roughly blocked to shape for future cutting and sitting loose, while both decorative gems and puzzle crystals were embedded and had natural terminations. Rewards would be generated when the puzzle-solving began. Kazue created a couple of bronze plaques at different heights to inform visitors of this, and that the rewards would be scattered throughout the level. If people did not pay attention and tried to bring out materials that were not designated as rewards, those items would simply convert back into mana at the edge of their territory and flow back into their core.

Figuring out how to get the crystals to 'sing' the way Kazue wanted was the hard part for this floor. After that, she just needed to arrange a set of insertion holes with crystal rods above them near the exit door that, when tapped, gave off a pure note. A silver baton was provided at this door for this purpose. The difficulty could be adjusted by changing the number of insertion holes to equal the number of people in the party plus two and providing one rod for every two people in the group, to a maximum of four rods and nine crystals to find for a seven-person group.

For the puzzle, it was another find-and-match. Now one had to remember the notes, find crystals in the walls that gave off the same note, loosen them carefully, and set them into the pedestal in the correct order. The crystals one needed to find and the crystals one sampled from did not look the same, so one had to work by sound alone. When one picked up the silver baton, one was given an audible and written warning that the rod would slowly evaporate over time until the puzzle was solved, but that any remaining silver would be theirs. Any unclaimed crystals or gems in a given room would disappear when the puzzle was completed.

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And naturally, she couldn't make the crystals too easy to find. So she created little half-hidden alcoves; stuck them on the back of ledges; hid single small crystals behind several large ones so that one had to really look to find them; distracted with placing claimable crystals and semi-precious gems in front of other crystals; and so on.

If one failed the puzzle by having the rod evaporate completely, one could walk back out to the antechamber, where it would reset as if one had completed it. She had worked in an enchantment that changed the musical notes after it'd been solved, and thus the correct crystals to find and match, resetting it for the next team of delvers. She'd had to add a similar alteration magic upstairs as well, when Mordecai pointed out that adventurers often shared notes. She also made sure that the rod evaporated more slowly the smaller it got, creating a price paid with time if one decided to try again instead of completing it when they could. Time was one part of how much mana they received after all, with exertion being the other major part. Also, the value of findable treasure was reduced slightly each time a person reset, making each pass less efficient. She had struggled with implementing that rule; there was some resistance to more work and effort creating reduced rewards, but when Kazue had focused on the nature of this rule as an anti-cheating measure to ensure fairness, that resistance faded.

Kazue nibbled on the tip of her tail thoughtfully for a moment as she considered the second room. Ah! This would work. She set up something slightly different but on a similar theme. The clue crystals each pulsed with a specific rhythm and pattern. Again, the color of the light and shape of the crystal didn't matter; explorers would have to find the crystals with matching rhythms and patterns. As the crystals did not need to be tapped, inserting the correct crystal instead created a crystal with a permanent light enchantment, with the size of the crystal and brightness of the light enchantment determined by how quickly that crystal was inserted. The color of the gem and its light matched the crystal that it was generated from.

The third one was more of a test of one's reflexes. In several places around this cavern, in spaces too awkward to reach directly, were crystal tubes that would make a small whistling sound before they shot out a fragile little orb of glass. The orbs would hit a wall, ceiling, or floor and shatter into harmless dust. They would continue to do so until the orb was caught without breaking. The trick was that the time between the whistle and the orb flying out varied, and each orb traveled at a different speed. If you tried to simply block the orb it would most likely break. You had to catch them gently. After that was easy though, the delver just placed them all in a little receptacle, and when all the orbs were present the receptacle would tilt them into a little glass-covered box filled with metal tines. They rolled and bounced down to make gentle musical notes before they shattered at the bottom level, releasing a whiff of sandalwood incense. That last bit was for her own nostalgia, a reminder of the temple and her fellow shrine maidens that she missed. Then a tray would open up to display the prizes and the door would open.

Kazue had decided to try to make single-use items to reflect the nature of the fragile marbles, and then found herself briefly overwhelmed by the knowledge of basic things she could make. It hadn't come from Mordecai either; the materials had mostly required getting samples, but the understanding to make simple potions, scrolls, and even wands was simply there. The scrolls were limited to the few spells her avatar had learned from Mordecai, or they would be if she didn't have the option of just using his knowledge to generate the scrolls. It didn't help her avatar know more spells, it only affected what her core could produce. After searching through all the appropriate spells, she settled on a selection of utility spells, such as creating water, purifying food, or creating a temporary ward, as well as healing potions and basic antitoxins. Naturally, the number and quality of the prizes was time-based. When she finished doing this, Kazue realized that even her creation of glowing gems lined up with what many crafters with magical knowledge could do, she could just do it a lot faster and easier.

Fourth room! Alright, now what to do here. Mm, Let's make use of the rabbits. She could train them, right? Or at least let them know what she wanted of them. And she didn't need to make big strong ones either. It took a little work and a bit of mana to evolve them, but eventually, she was able to make them smart enough to understand what she wanted. Whenever a group of explorers came through, several of the rabbits would show themselves and get their attention. Then they would try and show through pantomime and other actions what each of them wanted, which was always a relatively simple 'puzzle' of putting together a few of the crystal shapes, which snapped together when assembled correctly. Once each rabbit had what they wanted, they'd gather together to do a short, happy dance and present the prizes before the door opened. The challenge involved communication and helping others, so she wanted the prizes to do the same.

The basic reward was a set of rings, one for each person in the group, that would enable them to send brief messages to each other that no one but the intended recipients could hear. There was a minor magic that could do almost the same thing, but she wanted it to operate differently. First, it would only work between this set of rings and not to any target within range, and second, each ring was attuned to a specific person. But in exchange for that, it worked at a longer range and was harder to block. In a moment of inspiration to encourage repeat visitors, if anyone cleared this floor with separate groups, their ring would be tuned to the rings for both groups. This wouldn't let other people in the groups communicate directly, but the person attuned to multiple groups could pass messages between them.

As for rewards for clearing quickly and treating the rabbits patiently and kindly, hmm. This took a bit of thinking, but an inkling of an idea grew slowly. The message rings she had figured out slowly by herself, but this one she had to consult Mordecai for. There were occasionally physical issues that magic had trouble dealing with, and the magic that could fix them was usually expensive. But there were relatively simple aids that could be produced: lenses could be enchanted to correct vision to the point of providing color correction for those who normally had issues seeing color, and enchanted glass eyes were even easier as they had a physical interface. A similar item could be made for inserting into the ear to fix hearing problems, and a simple glove could be made that would create a ghostly, mentally controlled hand. It wasn't a very strong hand, but it was more than enough to help with many tasks. These wouldn't be direct rewards for most of her visitors, but they could be either sold or given to friends and family members. And that in turn might well encourage people who received such gifts to come visit the nexus now that they could participate in challenges easier.

This idea might have occurred to her faster if not for the nature of her clan. The Azeria clan was relatively small, and thanks to having a lot of long-lived members, they had a disproportionate number of strong priests and druids. Whether from birth or by accident, disabilities generally got fixed, though that might leave one with a social debt to the healer even if no fiscal compensation was called for. Sometimes a person didn't want to owe a favor that big. Large communities, especially big cities, couldn't always match that sort of generosity.

She hoped that when they got big enough, they could offer actual healing, but she could also feel a powerful instinct respond to the idea by demanding an appropriate challenge be met or a price paid. There seemed little point to the latter as then they could afford healing elsewhere, and people who needed healing might have trouble meeting a sufficient challenge. But maybe it could be a reward one could earn on another's behalf? That felt right.

Kazue shook off those musings to focus on her fifth challenge. The more she worked on her challenges the more fun it became, and she kind of wondered why she had worried so much before. Making combo puzzles out of smaller puzzle elements made her happy, so she did it again. There would be several sets of rabbits that would mob a group of delvers. Each set would want something slightly different done, and it would generally look like the sets of rabbits had conflicting requests to be fulfilled. In the end though, the delvers would find that there were once more crystals generating and firing marbles, and that they had to be deactivated by catching and holding the marble for that crystal. The crystals could then be moved to aim them, and the targets were crystal chimes that the party had to assemble and hang. The crystals could be reactivated by breaking the marble and turned back off by catching it again. They would need to line up the correct marble-firing crystal to the correct chime, and activate them in the correct order to create a brief melody.

Once the correct melody was played, a longer and more complex version would be played while the rabbits gave another celebratory dance as the entire area around the door lit up with lights and music before opening up. For prizes, Kazue went back to more celebratory items and provided a mix of durable instruments that could tune themselves if needed, music boxes that didn't need winding (and had dancing rabbits and foxes for their rotating centerpiece), dancing shoes in different styles that would help a person keep the proper step assuming that they could dance to begin with, and flowing silk ribbons and scarves with just a touch of magic to help them flutter, float, and billow in dramatic and beautiful motions when used for dance.

There! She was done. Of course, she hadn't moved their private chambers, so the exit now went to a circular sorting room that was approximately under the entrance to their starting zone. It would become the next stairwell once they could create their third floor. From there, the passageway then looped back around the outside of her 5-room arc to the front room of their private chambers. The whole thing was a little lopsided as Mordecai hadn't had a chance to give her the designs for anything on the other side, so it was still just a plain old corridor with nothing in it until that was fixed. Speaking of whom… eh, he was doing that meditation thing again. She'd always hated trying to meditate as a shrine maiden. She either fell asleep or played with her sleeves or tails. Or her ears would start to twitch, or she would lose herself in a daydream or something. Well, she didn't feel like walking back, and she needed to practice actually being a proper nexus core, so she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and demanifested her avatar.

Oh goddess, this was weird. She didn't have a body! Well, she did, she had her core, and their territory was also kind of her body, but it was strange not having a normal kitsune body! Nope, she didn't like it, how did normal nexuses stand being like this until they could make an avatar‽ Hastily, Kazue focused her attention on the spot behind Mordecai and spawned her avatar there again, to immediately jump on his back and give him a hug. "I got you!" She said as she snuggled up against him.

"Mmm, yes you did." He replied, leaning back into her. "I see you had quite the creative streak. Hopefully, anyone who chooses to take your peaceful route isn't expecting it to be too easy. They'll have to put some work into those, though I think it should be fun. And if there are any muscle heads who thought they could just bash their way through the easy path, well, I'm sure we can figure out some friends who can help solve that sort of problem."

Kazue felt him nudge at the warrens a touch, feeding them a little bit of energy and a carefully shaped concept. "Um, what did that-oh! I see! The warrens will grow with the nexus now! And most of the mana is coming from the living creatures there, so that'll limit how fast they grow, but we won't get any energy straight from them if the warrens have some growing to do. That's kind of neat, but that's not much energy, it's mostly plants and stuff."

The kitsune yelped as Mordecai reached up over his shoulder and pulled her forward, curling her over his shoulder to land her in his lap, then snuggled her into place. "You haven't quite thought that out yet. You have drawn in lots of rabbits, but we only have so much room for inhabitants. The rabbits will do what rabbits do, and before long we should expect to have lots of cute little guests. They can live back there quite happily and provide all the energy the warrens need, and eventually, many of them can become future inhabitants."

Oh, she hadn't thought about the bunnies breeding. That made sense. Um, why was he still looking at her like that? And leaning a bit closer? Um, was he going to – Kazue tensed briefly, then grabbed onto him and closed her eyes as Mordecai kissed her, sinking into the sensation. Moriko's kiss had been a little sweeter and lighter, but brief. This, this she could lose herself into.

Mordecai suddenly broke the kiss, leaving Kazue with a little pout of disappointment. "Uh oh, I think Moriko had a less than pleasant day."

Huh, what was he talking- ah. She could feel it now, a little ball of simmering frustration tinged with a bit of resentment. The half-elf was stalking back to the nexus and it felt like things had not gone great.

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