Reborn in another world as a Hermaphrodite

"That's why I didn't want to tell you..."

As both of them fell into silence, Mary suddenly chimed in with a question.

"Does brother know about this?"

"He should know... He could tell the elements near him didn't want to cooperate as easily.

Do you two understand why it's so hard for your brother? Even Mana doesn't go near him without help——"

"What help?" Sophia interrupted.

"His hard work to self-help himself. If he doesn't work as hard as he does now, it will all go away on its own."

The room fell back into silence as the three waited for Alex to come out of his mediation.

"Whew, I think I finally reached the early peek now," Alex murmured out loud as he opened his eyes back up.

"That was ten minutes, not the five minutes. And we already packed up your bags." Mary pointed out.

"Thank you... Ahem, Mom, let's go on the trip!"

Seeing all three kids wearing their backpacks and fully ready for the trip, Katherine sat back up from the bed.

"Okay. Everyone just stand in this circle. I'm going to use teleportation magic this time for this trip."

As a glowing circle suddenly appeared on the ground, all three of the kids quickly stepped inside together.

With the light appearing stronger and stronger, they could feel the burst of dark energy 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 stepped in herself.

"Bang!"

Before the three could blink, the space around them turned dark before appearing in the middle of a forest.

"Woah, what was that?" Sophia asked in shock, with the other two still recovering.

"Teleportation magic, specifically intra-dimensional drift... You three will learn it one day if you guys decide to pick dimensional magic."

"Huh?"

Both girls couldn't understand it a single bit, except Alex, who thought of it as transporting through a wormhole using dark magic.

"Ahem, it looks like the teleport anchor still hasn't changed a bit... Come on, follow me."

As all three of the kids followed Katherine, they all began walking down a narrow dirt path.

"Mom, where are we at?" Alex curiously asked, as everywhere they looked, they were surrounded by trees.

More importantly, the path was covered with overgrown vegetation, including branches and rocks, which Katherine had to clear in the front.

"We are going to explore a long-lost dungeon. Aren't you all excited?"

"A dungeon!" Mary yelled in excitement, with the other two looking just as excited.

They had heard of all kinds of dungeon exploration in Katherine's bedtime stories, with dreams of exploring one themselves.

"Now I need you all to be extra careful and don't yell, okay? Or else I'll never do this again."

With all three of the kids nodding in agreement, they continued down the path until they began walking uphill.

The forest started to disappear as they now began walking up the stairs on some sort of mountain.

Despite the fact that the sun went from the horizon on the east all the way to the middle, none of them complained.

"Okay, let's take a break here... Here's your sandwiches."

As Katherine took out three sandwiches from her backpack, the three took out their water jug for a drink.

After the short lunch break, the four of them resumed back to walking up the stairs.

By the time the sun had set all the way to the west end of the horizon, they finally reached the top.

Looking back, they could see the giant forest that they had just left, with no end in sight.

They could also see the steep hill they had traveled, with a deadly cliff on both sides of the stairs they had come from.

"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 complained the same line she had been repeating the whole time since they started walking uphill.

"Yep. The dungeon is right in front of us now."

As the three of them followed Katherine down a flat path ahead, they finally saw what she was talking about.

It was a cave with an aged stone sign on the side that had become unreadable.

"Mom, you explored inside this dungeon before, right?" Alex asked, as he suddenly had a bad feeling.

"Of course. A few of my friends and I have already cleared it in the past."

Seeing all three looking a little disappointed, Katherine decided to add something that changed their mind.

"But that's like twenty years ago. So the dungeon could very well be inhabited by new monsters."

All three of the kids immediately shifted into excitement as they followed Katherine all the way to the entrance.

"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 back, her face looked a little confused.

"Huh... There's a chest inside. I don't remember that being there."

After a short silence, Katherine finally took a step inside the cave.

"Ahem, I'm going to let you all explore this yourself. You three are going to deal with the challenges ahead, okay?"

All three of the kids nodded in agreement, moving in front of Katherine as Sophia cast a small light spell to see inside the dark cave.

There was nothing besides rocks and more rocks as they walked down the cave.

Soon, they couldn't even see the exit as they were now surrounded by darkness, with a small light showing their path.

After walking for a bit, they finally saw something else other than rocks.

It was a bunch of bats flying past them as they screeched out loud.

"Geez, my ear hurts..." Alex murmured as none of them looked scared at all.

As they continued walking down the path, they finally saw the first challenge.

It was a giant rock door with some sort of puzzle lock on the side.

"What's this?" Mary curiously asked as they walked closer to the puzzle.

Before them were ten stone statues, each having a unique shape.

The first one was a bear, and the second one was a horse. The other eight were just different kinds of animals.

"You three have to solve it yourself. I can't spoil the fun."

The three kids started thinking in silence as they tried to understand what each meant.

They could lift the statues, revealing a small bump on the bottom that allowed it to be connected.

But all the bumps were the same hole as the one below the statue's leg, which made it hard to tell which goes to which.

"Let's take all of them down first... Do you guys have any idea for this?" Alex asked as he put them side by side above a rock.

"These are what those churches worshipped in the capital, right?"

Sophia asked, remembering all the different holy animals that the churches in the capital worshiped.

"Yeah... What does any of these gods mean, though?"

As Alex tried to move the statues around to create a pattern, Mary suddenly suggested an idea.

"Maybe it's the sizes of the statue?"

Alex immediately took that idea as he put all the statues back onto the rock ledge.

After securing them onto the small bump from the smallest statue to the biggest statue, nothing happened.

Changing it from biggest to smallest also did nothing, much to their disappointment.

"How about we just keep trying a combination? It eventually solves itself, right?"

Sophia began switching the statues one by one, hoping that they would do something.

"That would take over 3 million tries. It's going to take forever if we try to brute force it."

Alex pointed out as Sophia continued to switch around the statues.

"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 seven elements, they were stuck with three statues that didn't seem to glow no matter what.

"Mom, why don't these glow up at all?"

Alex curiously asked as he began to just brute force the last three.

"That's because you guys haven't learned that kind of magic yet."

As Katherine replied, the massive stone door finally began to slide to the side.

All four of them quickly took a step back as the entire cave started to shake.

"You three ready to officially enter the dungeon?" Katherine asked.

"Yes!"