The “meeting room” looked less like a place where divine negotiations should happen and more like a storage dump for a paranoid hoarder.

  Stacks of parchments were crammed into corners without order. Ink bottles with labels worn away sat half-open on crooked shelves. A pile of dull-looking crystals rolled lazily across the stone floor, bumping into a discarded skull. The air smelled faintly of burnt paper, stale mana, and something that might have once been food.

  Nolan stood in the doorway, arms crossed. “This is not going to look good when the Goddess and the Akashic Record show up,” he said flatly. “Unless you were aiming for ‘post-apocalyptic thrift store.’”

  Before the Lich could respond, Vaelreth was already moving. She strode into the chaos like a predator stalking fresh prey, plucking a dust-covered scroll from the nearest pile and unrolling it with curious fingers. “Oh, this is fun,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “It’s like treasure hunting, except the treasure is other people’s secrets.”

  The Lich shifted uncomfortably, drifting closer to her like a shadow. “Don’t touch that. That’s a three-century-old contract on hydra egg trading. And—hey—don’t even look at that drawer. It’s private research.”

  Vaelreth smirked without looking up. “If it was that private, you wouldn’t leave it lying out like a bored dragon’s buffet.”

  Nolan sighed, stepping inside and kicking a loose quill out of the walkway. “She’s right about one thing, though—this is a mess. We’re cleaning it. I’m not letting the Goddess walk in here and think we live in a landfill.”

  The Lich bristled. “This isn’t a landfill. It’s a workspace.”

  “It’s both,” Nolan deadpanned.

  The Lich folded his arms, muttering under his breath, “Surface-worlders and their obsession with appearances…”

  The Lich finally threw up his bony hands—figuratively and literally—and floated toward the center of the room. “Fine. You want it clean? You’ll get it clean. But I’m not letting you two rummage through my life like bored burglars.”

  He snapped his fingers.

  From the dark corridor beyond, six skeletons clattered in one after another, their bones clicking like impatient typewriter keys. Each carried a box, crate, or bundle of rope—apparently ready for relocation duty.

  “Take everything,” the Lich ordered, sweeping his arm toward the room. “Research papers, contracts, ink formulas, bone fragments—move them to Storage Chamber Three. And if anyone so much as wrinkles a page, I’ll know.”

  The skeletons didn’t even look at him, simply obeying in eerie, jerky silence. Vaelreth grinned, watching one lift a precarious stack of crystal jars without spilling a drop. “Efficient,” she admitted. “Creepy, but efficient.”

  Nolan gestured at a particularly dusty pile of parchment. “Make sure that one goes first. If it’s flammable, I don’t want it anywhere near Vaelreth’s idea of ‘ambient lighting.’”

  The Lich narrowed his eyes at him, then pointed toward the hallway. “I’ll be in the lab. If you want something, ask the skeletons. Don’t follow me.”

  Nolan crossed his arms. “Good. Now we can clean without worrying about you having a heart attack over your precious piles.”

  “I don’t have a heart,” the Lich replied flatly.

  “Exactly,” Nolan said.

  With a final annoyed flick of his robe, the Lich drifted out of the room, muttering something about “surface-world neurosis” and “wasting perfectly fine dust.” The skeletons continued their silent procession, ferrying centuries of clutter into the dark.

  By the time the last one left, the room was an empty stone shell—echoing, bare, and strangely… promising.

  The meeting room was now an empty shell—bare stone walls, a cleared floor, and a few stubborn scuff marks where shelves had stood for decades. Nolan clapped his hands once. “Good. Now… where are the forks and knives?”

  The Lich, in the middle of handing a stack of scrolls to a skeleton, turned his skull with slow suspicion. “…Where are the what?”

  “Forks. Knives,” Nolan repeated, like the words should be self-explanatory. “The things you use to cut food and pick it up.”

  The Lich blinked—well, gave the skeletal equivalent of blinking—then tilted his head. “…You… cut food? With… tools?”

  Vaelreth snorted. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what a fork is.”

  The Lich’s tone was dry, but serious. “Never heard of it. You move the food into your mouth with telekinesis, like a civilized person. It’s basic survival magic. Every adult has a Telekinesis card. Those who don’t are… incomplete.”

  That last word stuck in Nolan’s ears like a splinter. Incomplete. That’s probably how his so-called noble family had seen him from day one. In a society where telekinesis was as common as breathing, he was the one showing up without lungs.

  “Yeah,” Nolan muttered, forcing a shrug. “Well, where I’m from, we use utensils. Not magic tricks.”

  The Lich tilted his head further. “What’s a utensil?”

  “Something that touches your food so your hands don’t have to.”

  The Lich’s jaw moved in what might have been disgust. “…You make… little food weapons? And everyone owns them?”

  “Not weapons. Tools. For eating.”

  Vaelreth leaned against the wall, amused. “Sounds like a waste of time to me. Why not just roast the food and shove it in your mouth?”

  “Because,” Nolan said, pointing at the cleared table space, “when the Goddess and the Akashic Record show up for the meeting, I’m not letting them watch someone slurp their dinner midair. We’re going to have forks, knives, and spoons. Proper ones.”

  The Lich gave a creak that might have been a sigh. “If you insist on filling the room with strange Earth customs, that’s on you. Just don’t expect me to… ‘fork’ anything.”

  “Fine,” Nolan said, smirking. “But you’re still going to sit at the table.”

  With the Lich’s belongings carted away and his protests echoing somewhere down the hall, the meeting room felt unnervingly… empty. Cold stone. Faint mana residue clinging to the walls. A flicker of torchlight that made every shadow look like it wanted to stab you.

  Nolan took one look around and shook his head. “Yeah… this won’t do. We’re not having the Goddess and the Akashic Record sit in what looks like a villain’s boss chamber.”

  Vaelreth tilted her head. “It is a villain’s boss chamber.”

  “Not the point.” Nolan stepped to the center and clapped his hands. “Alright. Chairs. Tables. Lighting that doesn’t scream ‘you’re about to be sacrificed.’ We’re doing this properly.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Vaelreth’s smirk turned mischievous. “I’ve got a card for that.”

  Nolan narrowed his eyes. “Pretty sure you don’t—”

  Before he could finish, Vaelreth reached into the pile of confiscated research material the skeletons had left in the hallway and plucked out a single black-sleeved card. The seal mark on its corner pulsed faintly—an Academy-licensed card. She gave it a quick flourish before sliding it into her field slot.

  A chill shimmer spread through the room. Will-O’-the-Wisp Lantern activated, summoning ghostly blue flames that swirled into place like playful spirits. They drifted toward the walls, settling into improvised sconces made from old brass rings scavenged from the Lich’s storage.

  The eerie light softened the dungeon’s oppressive shadows without losing its magical edge. Nolan had to admit—it was perfect.

  Meanwhile, he got to work on furniture. The skeletons brought in salvaged wood and chunks of stone from unused chambers, and Nolan pieced together a long rectangular table, the kind that would make a noble meeting look official. The chairs were rough but serviceable—stone bases with wooden backs, each cushioned by strips of old fabric Vaelreth had “borrowed” from the Lich’s textile storage.

  By the time they were done, the room looked almost… welcoming. A polished stone tabletop. Chairs in neat formation. Will-O’-the-Wisps painting the walls in soft blue light. Even the air felt less like a dungeon and more like a private conference hall—if you ignored the faint smell of bone dust.

  Nolan stood back, arms crossed. “There. Now it looks like somewhere you’d discuss strategy, not where you’d get your soul bound to a cursed dagger.”

  Vaelreth smirked. “And you said my magic was only good for destruction.”

  “Still true. But I’ll give you points for interior design.”

  Somewhere in the distance, the Lich’s voice carried faintly down the corridor: “If you used one of my licensed cards without permission—”

  Nolan glanced at Vaelreth. She smiled like a cat caught in the pantry. “Don’t answer. He’ll find out soon enough.”

  The Lich returned exactly three minutes later, arms folded, suspicion etched into his skull-like face. The first words out of his mouth weren’t about the stolen card—surprisingly—but a muttered, “…This is disturbingly neat. I don’t trust it.”

  “Good,” Nolan said, giving the polished table a final approving tap. “Now we move on to the next step—materials. We need metal.”

  The Lich tilted his head. “Metal?”

  Nolan pointed to his sword. “This. Strong, shaped, lasts forever. In my world, you build everything important out of it.”

  Vaelreth leaned back in her chair, tail curling lazily around the leg. “In my world, it’s one of the most common and useful materials. Weapons, armor, tools—you name it, metal’s in it.”

  The Lich frowned, his eye flames narrowing. “Interesting. I’ve heard of this substance in my research, but I’ve never seen a source. My people work with wood, bone, or anything the dungeon provides. Metal just… isn’t part of the culture.”

  Nolan’s brows furrowed. “No mines? No smelting?”

  “None that I know of,” the Lich said. “At least not in this age. If it exists, it’s well-hidden or forgotten entirely.”

  “That,” Nolan said, “is a problem we’re going to fix.”

  Vaelreth’s eyes lit up. “Then the way to fix it is obvious—dig through your stash. You’ve been hoarding things for centuries. You might already have it and not even know.”

  The Lich’s expression twisted somewhere between irritation and reluctant interest. “…If you must go through my research piles, at least wear gloves. Some of those items are cursed.”

  Nolan grinned. “Perfect. Curses don’t scare us.”

  Vaelreth added, “But boredom does. Let’s go treasure hunting.”

  The Lich’s “research piles” turned out to be less a pile and more a sprawling, haphazard graveyard of parchment rolls, cracked vials, sealed jars, and card fragments—half of them glowing faintly, the other half whispering in languages no one wanted to understand.

  Vaelreth dug through it with a predator’s enthusiasm, tossing aside dusty scrolls like they were worthless shed skin. “I could get used to this. You really can tell a lot about someone from their mess.”

  “I prefer ‘organized chaos,’” the Lich muttered, standing in the doorway like a sentinel guarding a forbidden vault.

  Nolan crouched beside a warped shelf, prying open a leather-bound ledger. The ink was faded, and the handwriting looked more like claw scratches than letters. “These notes mention… something called ‘smelted ore.’”

  “That’s the old name for metal,” the Lich said, crossing his arms. “I’ve been trying to research it for years, but every record leads to dead ends. And when I did find something, it was written in the Underworld’s pictographic scripts—dense, inconsistent, and easy to misinterpret.”

  Nolan glanced up. “Sounds intentional.”

  “It is,” the Lich confirmed, voice low. “The Goddess doesn’t care if something exists here naturally. But knowledge from other worlds? That’s another matter. She locks it away, makes it impossible to integrate. If it doesn’t fit the story she’s writing, it’s erased or hidden.”

  “Because she doesn’t want anyone else authoring her plot,” Nolan muttered.

  “Exactly,” the Lich said. “Metal, advanced machinery, foreign magic systems—it’s not that they’re dangerous by themselves. She just doesn’t want her world to be shaped by someone else’s ideas.”

  Vaelreth stopped mid-rummage, her claws holding up a sealed glass jar filled with glittering black powder. “Let me guess—this is another ‘foreign concept’ she decided we shouldn’t have?”

  The Lich peered at it. “…If it is what I think it is, it might be residue from refining something. But without the original process, I can’t replicate it.”

  Nolan set the ledger down. “Then we keep digging. Somewhere in this mess, you’ve got a clue you don’t realize is valuable.”

  Vaelreth smirked. “And I’m going to find it first.”

  The Lich sighed, his eye flames dimming. “Just… don’t summon anything by accident.”

  Vaelreth’s claws scraped over another layer of dust and parchment, tossing aside a cracked bottle that oozed something suspiciously alive. “You keep more junk than a dragon hoarding sentimental rocks.”

  “It’s called archival preservation,” the Lich grumbled, pacing behind them as if his presence alone would prevent theft. “Every scrap here was collected for a reason.”

  “Yeah,” Nolan said, brushing dust off his sleeves, “and half of it looks like it hasn’t been touched in a century. You’d never survive in an office audit.”

  Vaelreth froze mid-motion, her slit-pupiled eyes narrowing on a lump buried under a nest of brittle scrolls. It shimmered faintly, the way light sometimes caught on her scales. She pulled it free, dust scattering in golden motes.

  It wasn’t a gem. It wasn’t crystal. It was… heavier.

  Nolan’s eyebrows rose. “That’s… metal.”

  The Lich leaned forward, flames in his sockets flaring slightly. “Metal…?” He reached out, almost reverently taking it from Vaelreth’s claws. “This isn’t a mana crystal… no enchantment lines… no fracture for channeling.” He turned it over slowly, voice growing quieter. “I’ve been searching for the meaning of this composition for centuries.”

  Nolan tilted his head. “You mean you didn’t know what this was?”

  “I knew it was… different,” the Lich admitted, still examining it. “But without the knowledge to work it, it was useless to me. I’ve combed through banned texts, half-burnt pictographs, scraps of language from other worlds—always incomplete. And now you tell me this is forged… shaped… into tools?”

  “Tools, weapons, infrastructure,” Nolan said, his tone flat but his eyes sharp. “This is the kind of thing you build civilizations with.”

  Vaelreth smirked. “Looks like I just pulled the Holy Grail out of your garbage pile.”

  The Lich didn’t even rise to the bait. His fingers traced the surface as if memorizing every line. “Centuries,” he murmured, “searching for this… and it was under my nose the whole time.”

  Nolan’s grin widened. “Guess your library’s about to get a metallurgy section.”

  The Lich’s flames flared again—this time with something closer to excitement. “Then teach me, Caelthorn. Show me what your world knows of shaping this… metal. I want every word of it.”

  The meeting room had transformed from a cluttered tomb into something resembling a war council chamber. The rough stone walls now glowed with steady will-o’-wisp sconces, the air warm instead of damp. A polished slab of black stone sat in the center, flanked by mismatched but functional chairs.

  Nolan leaned back against the table, watching the Lich pace with the metallic rock clutched in his skeletal hands. Vaelreth lounged on her chair—if “lounged” meant her tail was wrapped possessively around the leg like she might drag it into a hoard later.

  “We could wait until after the meeting,” Nolan suggested, “or we could test forging now and really impress our… divine guests.”

  The Lich stopped pacing, his flames flaring. “No. This isn’t something we wait on. If what you say is true, shaping this could change everything.”

  Vaelreth snorted. “He’s already obsessed. Give him a week and he’ll replace half this dungeon with metal doors.”

  The Lich ignored her, sweeping toward a side chamber. “We’ll need a heat source capable of sustained high temperature. A crucible—though I have none that will withstand this. And tools… which, apparently, I now know exist.”

  “Skeletons can fetch the raw stuff,” Nolan said. “We’ve got wood, stone, and bone for the setup. Vaelreth’s magic—”

  Vaelreth raised a brow. “Not my magic. But maybe one of those licensed flame cards I found earlier.” She flicked a stolen card between her claws with a mischievous smile.

  The Lich didn’t even scold her this time. “Fine. Use whatever works.” He set the metallic rock down in the middle of the table, and for a moment, the three of them just stared at it—like it was more than ore. Like it was a piece of the future.

  Nolan broke the silence. “If the Goddess wants a meeting here, she’s getting one in style. Chairs, lighting, and maybe a little bit of technological blasphemy on the side.”

  The Lich’s flames flared into a sharp point. “Good. Let’s give them something to talk about—something they can’t unsee.”

  And with that, skeletons began marching in from the hallways, arms laden with tools, scraps, and anything that might serve their new purpose. The dungeon, for the first time in centuries, hummed not with the stillness of the dead—but with the restless ambition of the living.