"The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities." ~ Stephen Covey

We were getting into the evening hours that had become my bread-and-butter time for exploration and archaeology, and I saw no reason to change that pattern now. I assumed that the simplest way to find my way to either a central mana gathering array or a settlement of the original inhabitants would be to follow their access tunnel back toward the sky island's core. That DID mean abandoning the path I'd been following from the gnomish city, which I was a bit torn about, but that had the upside of letting me ignore the dracolisk for a while. It seemed to be ignoring me in turn, so I was happy enough to leave it in a state of detente for the time being.

That assumed that the two tunnels wouldn't converge at some point. Knowing my luck, it was entirely possible that the dracolisk's main lair would end up being at that central node. It seemed too much to hope that nothing had taken up residence in the most mana-rich part of the island. My primary hope was that whatever defenses the original inhabitants had left were still functioning to keep intruders out. It seemed unlikely that they'd have a defense against my incursion, but I wasn't even positive about that.

Frankly, the kind of redundant overengineering required to keep a complicated system like the sky island running, basically unattended, for over 50,000 years was more than I could even envision. Something must be maintaining at least some of these systems, but if it was any kind of macroscopic creature, automaton, person, or spiritual being, I had yet to see any evidence of it. For the moment, at least, Occam's razor said that they'd just built it to last and it had. Who knows, though, possibly others had performed maintenance on the islands in previous eras. For all I knew, maybe the goddess just spawned in a dungeon every few millennia and tasked it with repairs – I could just be the most recent in a long line of metaphysical repairmen.

I snorted silently. Maybe I could answer some of those questions or at least rule out some of the weirder possibilities if I actually went and looked to see what I could find. I returned my focus to the tunnel right where I'd placed the puzzle door and began to gradually expand my domain down the tunnel towards the core.

This tunnel had a somewhat steeper downhill grade than the one I'd encountered near the gnomish city but was also starting from a higher elevation. Now that I thought about it, though, this tunnel and the one I'd run into with the dracolisk did, in fact have some similarities in terms of their basic structure and dimensions. I wasn't sure if that was because they shared a standard building pattern, or were both simply suited for dwarves. Hakdrilda's reaction to the tunnel was telling though, as it seemed the dimensions were different enough from what she was accustomed to that they felt a bit off, while being similar enough to not feel entirely alien – sort of an uncanny valley for dwarven tunnels, I guessed.

From any objective standpoint, I wasn't finding much, though that was much as I'd expected. Given that nothing had disturbed the mana gathering array, at least as far as I could tell, I was assuming there were measures in place somewhere to prevent that. I didn't know whether that would take the form of a security door somewhere up ahead, some form of concealed entrance, or some sort of defensive measures, or even a combination of any or all of those things – but I couldn't imagine that in over 50,000 years no one would mess with the array, even given what a terrible idea that would be for most people. It was, I supposed, technically possible and somewhat more likely that the array could regenerate itself from some forms of interference. Still, my money was on the array having been successfully secured until I'd effectively tunneled in; the temptation to harvest the various crystals and magical mushrooms or to tap the mana feed was significant, after all.

I hadn't gone much more than 150 meters past where I'd detoured to provide access to Hakdrilda when I got my first indications of what was keeping the array safe from internal intrusion. The tunnel appeared to simply dead end at a blank wall, which at the surface level showed no indication of a secret door. It wasn't until I'd extended my domain to encompass the end of the passage that I could detect the mechanism to unseal the door (which was, itself, set into the side of the passage, not the dead end proper). Even on this side, which presumably had reduced security concerns, someone had invested in multiple layers of concealment.

The door was a sliding one, where the entire 50 cm thick granite slab was set into grooves in the floor and ceiling, allowing it to be opened, once a series of mechanical and magical locks were released. The magical locks were powered by a crystal inset into the wall on the array side of the door about a meter back along the tunnel on the opposite wall and connected to the mana conduit from the array. That crystal was concealed behind a few centimeters of stone and sealed in with no means of access for most. Users could place their hands on a nondescript section of stone on either side of the door and input a variable sequence of earth and void mana pulses to release the lock. Doing so successfully would release the magical lock, which mostly involved causing surrounding stone to recede from the edges of the door, where it had both concealed the grooves of the door and secured it in place.

Blueprint acquired: Earth/Void Mana Lock

I was under the general impression that void mana was a highly unusual affinity for most beings in Relnis, but given the hints from Kraal's analysis, I wasn't as surprised as I might have been.

Releasing the mana lock, while requiring one to know where the door access runes were hidden (under a layer of stone), was still only half of the opening process. The other part was mostly mechanical, though the multiple keyholes distributed around the door were also hidden behind stone and only revealed themselves after the mana lock had been released. In what seemed like overkill to me, there were 12 separate keyholes – of which 3 needed to be released to allow for entry; the other 9 appeared to trigger traps of several types (mostly defunct at this point), send an alert signal somewhere back towards the core, and cause the mana lock to reengage for a roughly 3-hour lockdown period before it could be released again.

Blueprint acquired: Elaborate Dwarven Security Door (Dor'Enth'as type)

I found it interesting that the name of the type provided by the system mimicked the name given to the island in academic circles. It had shifted, but it seemed as though some memory of the original inhabitants may have lingered in the common knowledge somehow (or possibly been divined or, as in this case, maintained by the system). Fortunately for me, absorbing the entire system whole cloth obviated the need to locate the missing keys, as I could simply deactivate the various traps "manually" while manipulating the locking mechanism directly. I suspect that otherwise it would have been simpler to just tunnel around the damn thing. Frankly, the whole thing smacked of deliberate overkill and the hobby of some obsessed craftsperson. Still, it HAD worked to secure the passage for millennia, so I couldn't be too snarky about the whole thing.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Moving past the concealed, elaborately secured door put my domain into a cross passage of essentially identical dimensions that seemed to extend a good distance without turning in either direction. This passage wasn't going to lead me directly towards the core, appearing to be oriented in more of a circumferential manner. In one direction, it led generally back towards my main dungeon, though I suspected if it was going to intercept anything I'd claimed it would be back towards the dracolisk and those tunnels. The other direction offered no obvious clues, and I paused for a moment to evaluate my options.

It was getting pretty late in the evening, and I was considering calling it quits for the night. It was at that point that I'd realized that I could no longer sense the mana conduit, though I'd been idly tracing it as it paralleled the passageway. I supposed it made sense that it was concealed in some fashion from the circumferential path. I backed my focus up to where I'd lost it, essentially a few meters short of the doorway. I'd gotten distracted and focused my attention on the elaborate door, but when I went back I noted that the conduit had taken a steep decline and dove beneath the floor of the adjoining tunnel so that it was masked by several meters of stone – which I would guess to be enough to hide it from all but the most sensitive.

I felt confident that some way existed to continue following the conduit, and sure enough, once I'd expanded my domain a few meters along the cross passage in each direction, I'd encountered a concealed trapdoor leading to a narrower passage – again sealed with an earth/void mana lock, though lacking the elaborate locking door. The trapdoor was about 3 meters down the cross passage, in the direction farther from my core. This seemed like a more classic service tunnel, seeming less finished and rather cramped for any regular travel. It was definitely set up for a single dwarf at a time and would have likely given me claustrophobia in my old life.

Still, it was getting late, and now I'd added a third option to my explorations. I imagined I'd probably settle on tracing the secret passage back towards the core, but the urge to start filling in the now numerous voids in my domain was getting pretty strong. And at some point, I'd need to start constructing a third floor for real; it would slow my progress on the divine quest line, but improving my mana pool and regeneration would speed things up in the long run. I was still having trouble adapting my focus for a long-term pattern – always chasing the next new thing was a distinct trap, I knew. Toss in working with Hakdrilda, researching through the archives, supporting the Redcrests, and dealing with whoever else turned up, and I was clearly trying to do too much all at once.

All that, and I hadn't even had any traditional delvers yet, unless you wanted to count the goblins.

In the midst of this somewhat moderate existential crisis, I decided to draw my focus back to my core and try to construct myself a list of priorities and rough out a schedule for the next few weeks, at least. I'd been bumping along without much of a formal plan for far too long.

There were a few things competing for the spot of top priority. In the long run, repairing the sky island so that it didn't fall out of the sky was both the focus of my divine quest and necessary for my "continued existence." At the same time, I lacked the requisite knowledge to do anything about it and apparently had significant time to work on it. That lack of knowledge could, potentially, be rectified in a variety of ways – all of which would take time and effort on my part. The simplest part would be to simply work on advancing my relevant skills in runic magic and fungalmancy; between the skills I'd been rewarded and the texts I either had already or could borrow, that was a matter of reading and practicing. Of course, that would also require me to continue exploring to seek out other mana gathering arrays and presumably some control room somewhere. It would likely also be in my best interest to try to reach out to relevant scholars, if at all possible. I was guessing that issuing requests through the central archive might work, though Hakdrilda might also have some useful contacts.

My other primary concern would be to work on improving my dungeon, as I suspected that I was starting to get a bit unbalanced in my growth. I wasn't in any danger of losing myself to my dungeon urges or anything, the presence of the Redcrests was helping with that significantly, but I was starting to butt up against mana flow limitations which I knew would be helped by both building a third floor and filling in some of the gaps in the domain I was constructing. Those same dungeon urges were also hoping to draw in adventurers and put them to the test, though there wasn't anything immediate I could do to draw them in. Presumably, they'd show up on their own at some point, and once the flow began, it might be fairly steady, as long as I didn't disappoint too much.

In a move I was already somewhat regretting, I owed Hakdrilda some more attention. I'd agreed to play host and help with her studies, and that was starting to slip on me. I'd made the commitment, and I intended to follow up on it, regardless of the other demands on my time. The Redcrests needed less attention, and I suspected I could just check in with Glynesha and Orentha a couple times a week unless something happened (and I knew both they and I were hoping things would settle into a peaceful routine for them, for at least a few months).

I also owed the archives a certain level of output every month, though that shouldn't take too long, especially as my relevant skills advanced. I'd have to see what sorts of information requests came in, and particularly if I offered more work to the Goddess of Knowledge. At the same time, I needed to spend some time reading up from their library, though I was a bit limited in that regard until the institutional reader turned up. Probably just as well that I was restricted that way for a while.

Archaeologically speaking, I'd still like to do more work both in the Aubesan empire remains and with the Gnomish city. That said, those were both likely to take a backseat to the pursuit of the original inhabitants and their settlements. The career archaeologist in me was feeling rather spoiled for choice. In my old life, the things I'd already found would have been the focus of work for decades at a minimum, and here I was mostly absorbing them and moving on...

Finally, I needed to recognize that doing nothing but work all day, every day was likely to affect my mood and my mindset. I had hobbies I still wanted to pursue, but they'd all fallen by the wayside. I wasn't going to start up a D&D campaign for the Redcrests anytime soon, but some attention to the local birdlife was doable, and soon enough, leisure reading might become possible. I hadn't really asked anyone about that as a possibility, but in the worst case I could reread some of my own books that I hadn't so much as thought about for decades.

I drew myself up a tentative schedule, since I'd need to coordinate with Hakdrilda and the Redcrests. I also recognized that like any plan, it was going to have to be subject to change as events required. Still, I decided to rough out blocks where I worked on my dungeon for 5-6 hours a day, devoted another 5-6 on pursuing my divine quest by exploring towards the core, 3 hours given over to Hakdrilda, 3 hours on working on my relevant skills and knowledge base, a couple of hours on getting information down for the archives and/or Hakdrilda, and the rest of the time going to either meeting with the Redcrests or pursuing my hobbies.

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