"Hello, Martin. Are you awake?"

　　"Yes, Fred. If I wasn`t, your excavations would have gotten me up."

　　"Sorry, I was just& changing my entrance."

　　"I look forward to seeing it."

　　"Okay. What did you learn from that wizard guy?"

　　"I didn`t learn. I simply took his mind. Then Regnoweit took his flesh. Heh heh heh."

　　"Regno-what?"

　　"The naga who saved you, Fred. His name is Regnoweit. Regnoweit Bloody-Sands, is his full title."

　　"You talked to him?"

　　"Yes. I know many languages. Dragons have a natural affinity for them. Have I told you that?"

　　"Okay, fine, you talked to him. But what do you know? About the wizards?"

　　"First. You don`t have to worry about those humans again. The mind I took was from their grand-master. A perfectly predictable pile of human pride and privilege." Martin sounded super-smug about his alliteration. "He was the best they had, and the other ten humans were the best of the rest. His little demon cult will fall completely apart in the next few days."

　　"Demon?"

　　"Yes, that curse they used was demonic magic. I could smell it as soon as they started."

　　"So they worshiped demons?"

　　"No, they worshiped& some meaningless local deity they made up. I can`t keep track. But they were corrupted by demons. Which is one of the things demons like to do. They find a small cult under some rock, and they pretend to be divine messengers, and do a little dance, pass out some free magic coins, and the humans eat it up. They really are fools."

　　"But how did the demons get here? I mean, on the planet Aeru? Oh, Jim told me the first gate was open", Fred said.

　　"He did, did he? Well, that`s to be expected, and right on time. But the demons who specialize in corruption and infiltration& Well, they never left. They like being in among humans. They hide and bide their time, living in cities and towns all over the world."

　　"But why attack me? I`m not fighting demons. Not yet."

　　"Demons, unlike humans, aren`t fools. They are organized. They plan. They have rules. And somehow, they must have heard of this little Earth Spirit scheme. I still don`t think you`re going to raise a human army to save this world; it would take a thousand years more, and this world doesn`t have that kind of time."

　　But. They do see you as a threat. Or at least an annoyance. Well, they did. Now it`s harder."

　　"Harder than what?"

　　Martin humphed from his gold piles. Fred suddenly remembered that he hadn`t replaced any of the gold coins the Three Kings had stolen the last time. Martin said, "There`s a military concept called Flaming Data, where troops are sent blindly off to die, just so the generals can get more information about what they face. That is what is happening here."

　　The Leader we defeated was convinced that you were a new, weak dungeon, and he only came because he thought his previous attempts on you were foiled by incompetence. So he came to do it himself, and never thought for a moment he`d fail. Now that he has, the demon who was holding his leash knows you`re much more advanced and dangerous than they thought. Right now, the demons are re-assessing. They`re starting to understand that you and your other new Earth Spirits are something new, something that might oppose them. They will try again."

　　"You just said I didn`t have to worry about those humans again!" Fred whined.

　　"Right. Now, you have to worry about others. And demons, of course."

　　"Crap. I wish I could talk to the other Earth Spirits about this."Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

　　"Don`t you have a drum to make?"

　　"Oh yeah!" Fred immediately ran to his drum room. It was totally full of water. He`d made the drain hole in the wall, but hadn`t connected it to anything. "Crap! Okay, I can fix this."

　　So he did, connecting the drain to the pipe used to feed the naga`s oasis. The oasis pool was dry, so he was glad to fix it. Then he watched the drum room release its water. The stone bowl he`d made didn`t float, but as the water receded, he moved it, and rolled it over. He realized that the bowl wouldn`t float without some air trapped under it, so he did that. Even so, the bowl wouldn`t naturally stay floating upside down, in the center of the drum room.

　　He needed something, some rope or something similar. He knew he could control plants, and tried to find vines. But he didn`t really have any of those, plus he wanted to weave plant fibers, but that would require the plants to be dead, and he wasn`t sure he had control over plants that weren`t alive.

　　Fred cast his mind toward materials. What did he know that could be woven into a rope? Something that was earth, or stone, that he could control? His (programmed) knowledge obediently coughed up a solution. "Asbestos! That`s just the thing!"

　　He took some rock from outside the room, drug it inside, and transmuted it to asbestos. Which was weird. It was a rock, yes, but also a bundle of white-ish fibers, almost like cotton, or spider`s web. Anyway it was fibrous, and easy to manipulate, and in a moment he`d turned it into a woven string. He transmuted more, and kept going until he`d made a thick rope six spans long.

　　Then he fiddled with the bowl. He needed it to float upside down on the surface of the water, but stay in place and not tip over. He thought some more, then made rope anchors on four places around the lip of the bowl. He made four matching rope anchors in the floor of the room. Then he separated the rope into four pieces, and tied the bowl in place. It didn`t feel stable, and he had to fiddle with it some more, to get just the right amount of air into it, but finally it stayed where it was supposed to be, floating there, waiting to be "struck".

　　So Fred tried it. Jim told him to grab it and jerk it downward, so he did. The water splashed a lot, but he didn`t hear anything like drumming. He tried over and over, and while he did so, he remembered he had a whole domain to run, so he looked around, for the first time that day.

　　It was still pretty early in the morning, but the humans were out in force. They were all over the new entrance platform, and (just as Fred had hoped) a few brave entrepreneurs had set up portable stalls to sell their food and wares on the black stone terraces. Other humans were exploring the Escape Room, and the stairs that led to it. They seemed to appreciate it. In fact, every human he saw had to go down the stairs to check out the Escape Room, to see it for themselves.

　　He noticed that the humans, overall, seemed to be better equipped. They had good armor, and most of it was matching. Everyone had a nice weapon strapped to them. Several times he saw swords that looked like the fancy sword the Four Tropes had donated. Clearly the humans were enjoying his treasures.

　　Plenty of humans were inside the domain, fighting the creatures. The beasts were dying, the treasures were popping, everyone seemed happy. Or at least satisfied.

　　He wondered about the Three Kings, and went to see them. Sir One-leg still looked bad. In fact, without his armor he looked worse, pale and sweaty. The missing leg had been ripped off at the hip, and not cleanly. Bloody bandages covered the man`s hip, and were piled next to him on the floor. The other two knights seemed fine, and one was at the one-legged man`s bedside. But as Fred watched, the people around them scurried about with purpose. "I wonder if they`re leaving. I bet they`ve had enough."

　　Fred looked around at the rest of the big building. It was more lived in than ever, with more floors clearly occupied. He bet he`d see more people, if they weren`t currently out doing work.

　　Fred looked in on Shelley and the kids. Only two kids were in the domain, but one was swimming! Splashing and seemingly having a good time. Fred thought again about soap, and health. That made him think about the de-legged knight, and the silver tree.

　　"Hey Martin. The fen roob& The tree stones."

　　"The Fwen Rounbous ring. What about it?"

　　"They make health and stuff, you said?"

　　"The magic promotes health and protection, yes, I`ve told you this."

　　"Do you think the magic could reach all the way to my big building? Cause lots of humans are staying there now."

　　"Not surprising in the least. They`re like rats; they`ll get into anything. As far as the ring`s magic? I don`t know, but I could go outside and look."

　　"No no! I don`t want that. No dragon in town, remember?"

　　"Well then, you`ll just have to survey the magic for yourself."

　　"What? How do I do that?"

　　"Fred, Mana Sight is an exceptionally common spell, for any magical beings in this whole universe. I find it hard to believe you don`t know it innately. Is this another thing Jim didn`t teach you?"

　　"No. It never came up. Can you teach me? Please?"

　　"Because you said please. Take a deep breath, and meet me at the tree."

　　Fred, did so (metaphorically), and turned his attention to the silver tree. Sunlight was bright in the main shaft, but the sun wasn`t yet high enough to hit the tree with direct sunlight. The fairies seemed fine, spinning and playing among the branches. Martin stuck his head out of his lair, and lay his chin on the ground, not too close to the tree. He breathed a long, slow breath, in and out, drinking in the morning.

　　"This might be tricky, since you don`t have eyes, but we`ll try it anyway."

　　"Okay? Try what?" Fred asked.

　　"Like all magical beings, you`re& marinating in magic. It`s all around, inside of you, part of you."

　　"And it binds the universe together? I think I`ve heard this before."

　　"No. Pay attention. We want to get you to use your& eyes, to look at the magical, not the mundane. And for people with eyes, like me, I`d tell you two steps. First, gather a ball of magic behind your eyes. Then, dip your eyes. Like you`re seeing underwater, but look for the magic around you. It should be like catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye. When you`re doing it right, things should suddenly look very different."

　　"Okay, I don`t have eyes&"

　　"I know that! So do the best you can!" Martin said crossly.

　　So Fred tried. He tried the first step, gathering a ball of magic. Which he had no idea how to do. But then he had a thought; his lair ability showed him what sort of lair a creature wanted. Maybe it was like that? For that, he stared at a space and used his imagination. So he stared at Martin, and tried to imagine what his magic looked like. And he got results.

　　It was like Martin glowed. Or, flickered, really. The feeling was very slippery, and he had trouble holding onto it. He stopped, and shook his head to clear it, and stared at the tree this time. Then he made up some magic words to say, "Show me your magic!", and this time it was better. And brighter. The tree`s glowing was silver-gold, and it sparkled, and it was VERY bright. Fred felt that, if he did have eyeballs, he`da burned them out just now. But the effect flickered less.

　　"Wow, that tree is bright!"

　　"Okay, what color is it?"

　　"Gold. And silver, I guess."

　　"And what color am I?"

　　Fred turned his attention back to Martin, said "Show me your magic!", and saw Martin bathed in green and purple hues.

　　"Green and purple?"

　　"Then you`ve got it. Lesson over. Go forth and look for yourself." Martin yanked his head back in, like a grumpy turtle, and crawled back into his gold piles. Fred took a moment to create a new gold shower for him. It was due.