More cots got brought down.

  There wasn’t much else that we could do except read about the Dungeon and workout. The CBs messaging function wasn’t working for any of us except Kara, which I assumed was because of some specialized jammer. It was also disabling our skills, but that was more or less expected. This was the heart of the palace and it didn’t matter if the walls were made out of Tier Seven materials, there were plenty of skills and spells that could cause damage through walls. Though I had a feeling that even the walls were shielded somehow against such things.

  What surprised me most about the jamming was that Pixie was included in it. I could understand why the rest of the team was included in the lockout, but I wouldn’t have thought that Klix would lump her daughter into the same category as the rest of us.

  Pixie tried sparring with Rix a few more times before everyone settled in for bed. I couldn’t understand how both of them were moving let alone fighting. My entire body was sore and I could only imagine what it would feel like to be twisting and stretching.

  Klix never showed up the rest of the day, Kara wouldn’t elaborate on why, so either she didn’t know or couldn’t tell us.

  The next morning I woke up to Rix touching my arm. The lights had been dimmed so we could sleep, but it was still bright enough that I could see most things.

  “What?” I winced as she helped me shift out from under Ether. The tank had tried to sleep next to me, but the cots were just too small. Her head was almost directly on my seal and her hair felt like sandpaper as I slipped out.

  “Someone’s coming.” The golden woman pointed at the elevator.

  “How can you..?”

  My question got cut off by the chime announcing that the doors were opening. Whatever enhanced perception that Rix had was freaky. I would have been jealous, but I knew what she’d gone through to earn it and I would rather not travel that path. It was still impressive.

  Klix walked out of the elevator carrying a basket.

  “Oh good, you’re awake!” The Goddess handed the basket to Rix as she approached me. “Get your teacher up so we can start.”

  I looked at my CB and saw that it was just after five in the morning. “This early?” I glanced at the basket and saw that it was full of cheese, crackers, fruit and dried meat. It was the same thing that we’d eaten yesterday. “Shouldn’t I eat first?”

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  Klix patted my cheek with her hand. “Sweet child. I wouldn’t put you through that.” She motioned at Rix. “But if you think your stomach can handle this…”

  “I’m not that hungry.” I nodded to Rix. “Get Gesai up.” I turned back to Klix. “Why are we starting so early?”

  “This is going to take the better part of the day and we can’t exactly stop in the middle.” The Goddess walked over to Astrid’s side. “I looked into what was known about this type of seal and it’s going to be a little more difficult to claim than I originally thought.”

  “How so?” I tried to talk softly so we didn’t wake the other up.

  “An inverse seal is kind of like a level trap. Do you know what those are?”

  I shook my head.

  “Figures. Though I doubt it’s something he’d cover due to how rare they are..” She held out her CB so she could show me a diagram of an hourglass. “In a level trap, everything that isn’t the specific level gets pulled in unless it is this specific level.”

  I realized that the two ends of the diagram were labeled ‘0’ and ‘100’ with the middle at ‘50’.

  She moved the midpoint around stretching or shrinking how wide the diagram was based on which side she moved the midpoint towards.

  “For most seals, traps, locks, and such…” She moved the slider up to ‘60’, then spread it to ‘1000’ wide. “You can see how much Magic it takes for someone level fifty to break said seal.”

  The number at level fifty was 2,024.

  “That’s impossible…” I saw what she was getting at. “So setting a seal to require that much Magic to tamper with essentially blocks anyone with less than that from being able to get around it.”

  “Exactly!” She waved away the top part. “Most seals assume that you’re only going to get stronger, and you don’t want to lock yourself out, so they only block out the lower half and leave the upper half open.” She waved the top part back and pointed at how for the level trap, the Magic needed at level seventy was the same as fifty. “Most are going to have that, so it doesn’t make much sense to put in the extra effort when you can’t block those out. But…” She moved the slider all the way down to level one and set the width to one. “Make a seal at this level and put a trapping component to it…”

  My eyes bulged as I saw the number for level sixty. 1,152,921,504,606,850 Magic.

  “How..?” There was no way that anyone had that much. The value to be considered to have Tier Ten in a stat was 10,240. This was impossible.

  “Most don’t have the skill to do something like this until they are much higher level.” Klix nodded at Trent. “The theory is that if you can trickle enough Magic, then it would be possible for someone like me to build something like this, but if I increased the flow, it would start sucking until it swallowed me up, which is how his mind is trapped in the seal.” She pointed at level four. “But you, on the other hand, only have to use at least this much.”

  The number was still one.

  That was a little relief, but it left a lot of questions. “Who..?”

  “We don’t know who made them, trust me, there are Gods looking into it, but…” Klix nodded at Astrid. “All I can do is guide you and observe. The moment I try to intervene…’’ She clapped her hands and I jumped. “It’ll trap us both.”

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