"It's fine... He has no affinity."
Katherine answered as she finally made up in the end, not wanting to hide the truth from them.
"No affinity? How's that possible? Doesn't everyone born with even the slightest lean towards one element?"
Sophia's question made Katherine sigh. Her mind was already starting to regret telling them the answer, as she herself didn't know how to answer it.
"That's why I didn't want to tell you this..."
As Katherine stopped answering Sophia's question and fell into silence, Mary suddenly chimed in with a question.
"Does brother know about this?"
"Of course he does... You two don't notice him working so much harder than usual? Always trying to meditate a little more?"
Both girls silently nodded their heads, thinking back to the amount of time they had seen Alex meditating in the middle of the night.
Just as Katherine was about to say something, Alex finally exited meditation as he opened his eyes back up.
"Whew, I think I finally reached the early peek now," Alex murmured out loud as he felt more refreshed than ever.
"That was ten minutes, not the five minutes. And we already packed up your bags."
Sophia quickly handed him his backpack, her face looking a little nervous alongside Mary as if they had talked behind his back.
"Thank you."
"No problem."
As all three of them wore their backpack on their backs, Katherine quickly led them out into the living room.
"Okay. Everyone just stands in this circle... I'm just going to use teleportation magic this time for this trip."
A glowing circle suddenly appeared on the ground, and all three of the kids' faces were full of excitement as they stepped inside.
The light soon started to appear stronger and stronger on the ground as they could feel the burst of dark elements breaking into the room.
"Don't move. Just stay in the circle, and everything will be fine."
All three of them remained still, watching Katherine continue to cast her spell until she finally stepped into herself.
With just a single blink, the space around them flashes dark for a second before everything remerges.
They were now on a dirt road in the middle of a forest, surrounded by trees and grass on both sides.
"That's teleportation magic?" Sophia asked in shock, with the other two still recovering from the sudden change.
"Teleportation magic, specifically intra-dimensional drift with dark energy as a proxy for a wormhole. You guys will learn it one day if you pick dimensional magic."
"Huh?"
All three murmured in confusion, unable to understand all the technical terms Katherine had mentioned.
"Ahem, anyway, looks like the teleport anchor still hasn't changed a bit... Come on, follow me."
The three of them quickly followed Katherine, walking down the dirt path as their attention was soon grabbed by their surroundings.
Everywhere was filled with overgrown vegetation, including branches and rocks, which Katherine had to clear in the front.
"Mom, where are we at?" Alex asked curiously.
"In the middle of a forest... We are going to explore a long-lost dungeon. Aren't you all excited?"
"A dungeon!"
Mary immediately yelled in excitement, with the other two looking just as excited. All three of them had heard all sorts of dungeon exploration as bedtime stories.
They all had a dream of exploring a dungeon at some point themselves, which was now clearly coming to fruition.
"I need you all to be extra careful and not yell, okay? Or else I'll never bring you guys to a dungeon trip."
With all three of the kids nodding in agreement, the four of them continued to walk until the road ahead of them became too steep uphill.
They were forced to temporarily give their backpack over to Katherine, who carried them until they reached the end of the steep path.
Along the way, the forest that was all around them started to disappear, replaced by rocky hills in the distance and barren ground.
Slowly, the sun went from sunrise in the east all the way to the middle of noon.
Even though none of the kids complained, Katherine could tell the three of them were starting to get a little tired from all the walking.
"Okay, let's take a lunch break here... Here's your water and sandwiches."
As soon as Katherine announced the break, all three of them immediately sat down on the floor before accepting the food and water.
---
After the short lunch break, the four of them resumed walking on the dirt path before finally arriving at the top of the hill.
Looking back, they could see the giant forest that they had just left, with no end in sight as the cloud blocked the sun in the horizon.
They could also see the steep hill they had traveled, with a deadly cliff on a few of the other paths up the hills.
"Wow... We traveled so much today." Sophia murmured as they couldn't even see where they started from anymore.
"Yeah, and my legs are dying... Are we done walking?" Mary grumpily asked the same line for the twentieth time since they had been walking uphill.
"Yep. The dungeon is right in front of us now."
As soon as Katherine finished talking, Mary froze for a second before all three of them walked a little bit to the right to see over her.
Their eyes immediately widened in disbelief as there was a cave with an aged stone sign on the side that had become unreadable upon closer inspection.
Right next to it was a single tree that had grown much taller than any of the other trees they had witnessed inside the forest earlier.
"Mom, you explored inside this dungeon before, right?" Alex curiously asked, noticing Katherine's familiarity with the surroundings.
"Of course. A few of my friends and I have already cleared it in the past."
The answer immediately caused all three of them to look disappointed, but Katherine raised their spirit with her next line.
"But that's almost like twenty... No, thirty years ago. So the dungeon could very well be inhabited by new monsters now."
All of their faces were shifted into excitement as they followed Katherine all the way to the entrance of the cave.
"Wait, let me check the inside first."
As Katherine closed her eyes and put her hand on the cave's wall, a dark, glowing light appeared.
By the time she opened her eyes again, her face looked a little confused, as if something was a little off from what she had expected.
"Huh. There's a chest inside. I don't remember that being there... How weird."
After a short silence, Katherine finally took the first step into the cave before the three of them followed her inside.
"Ahem, I'm going to let you guys explore this yourself... You three are going to deal with the challenges ahead, okay?"
All three of the kids nodded their heads in agreement, going past Katherine as Sophia cast a simple light spell to lead the charge.
There was nothing besides rocks and more rocks as the cave led them down a steep path, even steeper than the one on the outside.
Soon, they couldn't even see the exit.
They were now surrounded by darkness, with only a small light from Sophia's spell showing where they were going.
After walking for a bit, they finally saw something other than rocks: a bunch of bats hanging on the ceiling.
"Ah!"
Mary and Sophia both screamed in panic as one of the bats flew almost right into their faces, causing all of the bats to fly towards the exit.
"Geez, my ear hurts..." Alex murmured, rubbing his ear as her sister's noise was even louder than the bats.
"Sorry..."
As the three of them continued walking down the path with Katherine behind them, they finally saw the first challenge.
It was a giant rock door with ten stone statues on the side, each having the same flat rock bottom with a unique shape on top.
The first one was a bear, and the second one was a horse. The other eight were just different kinds of animals.
They were all in different poses, seemingly dancing or celebrating something, all looking right at the stone door.
"What's this?" Mary curiously asked, as the three of them walked all the way to the door, with confusion on their faces.
"You three have to solve it yourself. I can't spoil the fun." Katherine replied as she remained in the back, showing no sign of help.
The three of them quickly turned back to the door and the statues, their mind thinking in silence as they tried to understand what each meant.
They could easily lift the statues, revealing a small bump on the bottom that seemed to be connected to the stone door.
All the bumps had the same hole as the one below the statue's flat bottom, which made it confusing to determine which went to which.
At the same time, it was clear this was some sort of puzzle lock. One that required them to put the statue in the right order.
"Let's take all of them down first... Do you guys have any idea?"
Alex asked as he put them side by side above a flat rock nearby, his mind still thinking of a way that could make sense.
"These are what those churches worshipped in the capital, right?"
Sophia asked, remembering all the different churches that worshipped different holy animals in the capital.
"Yeah... What do any of these gods have to do with this stone door, though?"
As Alex moved around the statues to create a pattern on the flat surface, Mary suddenly suggested an idea.
"Maybe it's the size of the statue that we have to put them in?"
Alex immediately took that idea, putting the statue back into each of the slots from the smallest statue to the biggest.
Unfortunately, nothing happened. Changing it from biggest to smallest also did nothing, much to their disappointment.
"How about we just keep trying a combination? Surely it will eventually solve itself, right?"
As Sophia took charge and began switching the statues one by one, everyone was hoping that it would do something.
"Stop. It's going to take over at least a thousand tries if we really try to brute force it like this."
Alex quickly pointed out, remembering the calculation inside his head to be two to the power of ten.
"Better than just sitting there——Wait, I have an idea."
Sophia suddenly stopped as she started casting a spell in her head. As light appeared out of her hand, the horse statue suddenly lit up as well.
More importantly, the bump that was meant to attach to the statue also started glowing up.
"You're a genius! Why didn't we think of that!"
Alex and Mary both started casting different elemental spells, matching the statues that lit up with the same bump.
However, after casting all six basic elements, they were stuck with four statues that didn't seem to glow for some reason.
They tried every complex sub-magical element they could think of, like ice, but it still didn't work at all, forcing them to resort to the dummy method.
"Mom, why don't these glow up at all?"
Alex curiously asked as his hand continued to switch the last four statues around to brute force the answer.
"That's because you guys haven't learned that kind of magic yet... Anyway, you three did a good job."
As Katherine finished talking, the massive stone door finally began to slide open. All four of them quickly took a step back as the entire cave started to shake.
"You three ready to officially enter the dungeon?"
"Hell yeah!"