Uneventful morning.

John was a bit surprised when he woke up this morning. The bed had two more people in it than when he fell asleep. Sylvia and Daphne had come back from the glade and joined them. John's intuition that the fountain would help Daphne was right: the bed was even warmer and more comfy than usual, and he could see the material glisten and sparkle where her body was mixed with the rest of the bed. John checked his gallery, but even if these two had a little fun in the fountain, the event was more focused on getting them both back to full health than a full blown sexual encounter.

"Wake up, sleeping beauty," he whispered as he kissed Anna. The way she giggled when he did it made him sure that she was already awake.

"Can't we stay here forever? I don't want to go to school!" she complained, grabbing his right arm and putting it on her tits. "See? Lots of nice things to do here today."

"Well, you do have compelling arguments. But you not being at your house when you are supposed to wake up will be hard to explain, and there are a few other nice things to plan for today," he told her, playing with the nice toys she just gave him access to.

"Bah, what could be so fun?"

"I think we could invite June for lunch..."

"You mean here? OK, that's definitely worth going to school for. I guess I can get up for that. We have an hour, right? Guess I'll start a few things for lunch then." A smart bed was definitely a good perk; the moment she decided that she wanted to get up, the mass of slime around her opened to let her out undisturbed. John watched her leave the room, totally satisfied with the semi official dress code for his kingdom. Seeing her and the other girls wander around naked was definitely ticking off something on his bucket list.

He followed her outside, the dryad was apparently asleep and the mute slime girl showed no intention to leave the bed for now. Anna entered not the kitchen but the bathroom, so John walked in another direction. He just went to grab a soda from the fridge and went to the armory.

The cheap painting gas mask that he had bought at the hardware store had been really useful, but was now destroyed beyond repair. It would be smarter to craft something better himself, but he lacked quality materials. The dwarven crossbow was another puzzle: it was not damaged since it was at maximum durability already. It was missing 5 or 6 pieces, that were absent or broken, and he would have to study it further to be able to craft replacements.

The armor of the girls were not worth repairing manually and contained little of value to scrap them for. He decided to let them stay in the armory and hope to soon be able to assign someone here for the auto repair perk, but apparently he needed someone knowing Craft or with maintenance skills to take the job.

His own armor was badly damaged; it was really not designed to tank stuff. He paid the 2300$ to repair it, being made of exotic materials made it impossible to repair with mana only and rather pricey in the long run. Just in case he ever needed some non obviously magical things to defend himself, he crafted some brass knuckles and a short baton, using twice the amount of materials needed and spending 200$ to overcome the low quality of the materials.

John had not seen Algernon or any of his kind in the castle the last night, and it intrigued him. He discussed it with Cali whom he met in the entrance of the castle, bringing some deer meat to store in the kitchen. Apparently they had started digging some warrens near a Maze entrance, next to the river going down the mountains to the lake. This was a great endeavor, and Algernon had gathered every able bodied rat and super rat to assist in the task.

John walked by the kitchen and noticed that Anna and Vesta were busy preparing some food. He couldn't help but levitate a freshly cooked, fruit-filled doughnut to himself. Anna waved a spatula in his direction with a disapproving look on her face before bursting into laughter. She then turned around and bent down to check the oven, giving him a perfect view of her naked ass from behind the simple apron she was wearing while cooking.

Soon, the fateful hour had come where both of them had to leave and pretend to be normal teenagers getting up for school. Getting a shower despite having been thoroughly cleaned in their sleep by their bed, eating breakfast and riding the bus to meet up at school. This was becoming really awkward.

The one surprise of the morning had been the return of Vanessa. She had been there in the bus, but something had changed with her: she didn't chatter all the way to school, bitching about everything and everyone. In fact, he did not hear a word from her even when Frank was trying to talk to her on the bus. John understood why once at school: despite her return her illness and the current state of the football team meant that she would not be reintegrated into the cheerleaders until the matches would start again.

English literature and Mathematics were totally uneventful, and John simply passed the time by sending messages to the various inhabitants of his kingdom. Apparently Daphne could clean things just by touching them, like the bed did, and Sylvia (who was in charge of her on John's orders) had simply tasked her to clean around the castle. Since the creation of the place, various people had walked through from the maze or outside, and no one had yet cleaned anything. Daphne apparently didn't seem to mind, as she was really not picky about what she would absorb and happy to be of help. Vesta had been instructed to melt down a part of the junk metal in the hope that once purified it would turn into a slightly lower quantity of normal metal. Being able to handle the stuff bare handed to remove the slag and impurities was of great help. Sylvia had been told not to make more elixir for now, as it would be stupid to waste base materials if they could upgrade the product with a new recipe in the next few days; instead, she continued to collect more slime material by feeding the jars with whatever she could find. Cali had volunteered to taste the food collected in the dungeon, but even if it was not harmful, it really did not taste great. It was decided that it would be offered to the ratfolk who did not really concern themselves about taste when it came to food. Even if they didn't like these items as they were, there remained the possibility to add them in bits in the sort of stew that they seemed to enjoy.

John entered the history classroom with a knot in his stomach. His last encountered with the stern looking teacher had not been totally enjoyable, with all the suicide missions and fleeing for his life. But in the end, it seemed like she didn't care at all. She was pissed for as long as he had been causing her trouble, and it had stopped the moment he had fixed it.

She had this cold, self-focused attitude which ran chills down his spine. But she was the most powerful mage that he knew of, and he was pretty sure that asking would not cost him anything.

"Mrs Wentworth, could I talk to you after class for a few minutes before my next period? I would like some advice on a special project and you are the most qualified person that I could think of to help me," he asked her at her desk before going to his seat. Anna was already seated and was anxiously watching the exchange.

"Mr Newman, of course... You know that I'm always available for my most hardworking students. Come to my office after the end of the period. I know that 10 minutes is a very short interval, but I'm sure that I will be able to make some time for you. Now, take your seat, class is about to start!" she replied. It was rather hard to guess, but her voice was not showing any hints of anger just her usual attitude towards anyone talking to her, like if they were barely worth her time.

It was a gamble, as John had no idea how she would react, but simply asking her information should not have a disastrous outcome. Worst case scenario, she would know what he wanted to know and refuse to answer. He spent the hour focused on the lecture, trying not to think about what would happen next. The bell ringing was less welcomed today once the period ended. John exited the classroom and walked to the entrance of her office; he knew that she could get there from a door in her classroom, but somehow using the official entrance seemed more fitting. He knocked on the door, and it opened by itself. His teacher was seated behind her large desk and showing him in. After two steps inside, the door slammed behind him. John checked the clock on his interface out of habit, it always displayed two different times, the real world time and the one from wherever he stood (actually three, he noticed now that the Arcadian clock was also displayed). This place didn't have time; it was literally stopped rather than sped up... John shuddered thinking about how much energy it might require and realized that it was probably something really temporary.

"So, my young mage student comes to me for advice? What brings you here, mister? Or maybe should I say your majesty? Something that your many friends can not help you with? Or that you wouldn't want them to know you are looking on?" she asked him as he sat on the chair facing her desk.

"My... friends, or rather for my acquaintances, are not well versed in some aspects of the studies of arcane matters, except to fight them, of course. I considered what you said after our last and very regrettable encounter, so I decided to see if you were thinking what you said then," he explained.

"Youngling, you had every right to despise the girl, a lot of good reasons too. Had I not had any interest in her I would have just watched as you exacted well deserved vengeance on her. You did not know where my interest lay, so your mistake was an honest one. If I spent my time killing or hunting down every person bothering me in such manner, there would have been a lot less magic users along the ages. You seek knowledge, specialized knowledge that only a powerful mage would possess. You should know that such things are rarely cheep, and I hope that you are willing to pay a fair price for it."

"I could possibly learn about it in a book, but I would first have to find a place where there are such books, and I doubt that there are many of these. Before talking about price, I should tell you what I need and be sure that you have it, then the bargaining can proceed. You... You learned of my status, could I ask first how spread this information is?"

"There are telltale signs for those who know how to look. I doubt that it is common knowledge to anyone that doesn't already have a particular interest in you. But don't let me linger any longer, what is it that you are after?"

"For reasons unnamed for now, I would like to learn what exactly constitutes an Arcane Sanctum and how would one could create or acquire one."

"Hmm, they grow so fast these days... This information is rather tame, I expected so much more... You probably know about essences and orbs of power. An Arcane Sanctum is a place or a thing created by a mage wherein he creates by himself such orbs to focus and control his powers. Such a thing is often created in a place of power that the mage is attuned to and would then allow him to tap into the power of this place remotely. This is the what. For the how I might say that there is no price for this information. As there are as many ways to achieve it as there are mages, it would be foolish and even dangerous to teach you how to do it one way, for there is only your way which will succeed. Next time please come with a more interesting request, I could use the entertainment. Now go on, you wouldn't want to miss your next class I'm sure, and good luck with this little puzzle. "

John didn't need to be told twice, so he got up and out of the room in record time, helped in this by the self opening door. When he walked outside, he noticed that one minute had elapsed despite outside time not moving while he was inside... He put this on the list of things to worry about later and ran along the hallways towards his next class. He really didn't want to miss his class with June and wondered how much Mrs Wentworth knew about this particular subject.