Pain, coupled with humiliation, racked the princess’ body as her back hit a stone wall. She coughed blood and felt her ribs breaking under the strain.

Warning: You have taken massive [Physical] damage! You have lost half your HP!

[Insta-death] negated by [Amulet of Avalon]!

Gwen barely had the time to get back on her feet, and the undead dragon was already upon her. She leaped to the side, sharp claws tearing through the stone wall like butter.

The princess attempted to cut the creature, channeling her holy power through her blade. Her weapon flayed the monster’s rotting scales but didn’t inflict any lasting damage. Her sacred [Paladin] abilities should harm the undead, so why?

Buffs, Gwen realized, as the dragon’s tail almost hit her like a flail. The necromancer had cast protections against [Holy] before transforming. He had become a being of pure strength bolstered by magic.

The undead dragon let out a fearsome roar, dark energies surging through his throat, and then unleashed a beam of black smoke at her. Gwen renewed her [Hasten] spell and moved as fast as she could, the stone turning to dust under the breath’s unholy power.

Everywhere, the battle’s tide had turned for the worse. The earth elemental had fallen, torn into pieces by goblins much stronger than the rest of their kind. Lady Yseult and Annie had regrouped with Takeru, but were all flanked by skeletons; Morgane and Walter Tye fared little better, engaged in a desperate battle against Hagen and his mummy ally.

And the dragon had marked the princess for death.

“Gwen!” Morgane left Tye to fend off for himself against the undead, unleashing a fireball at the dragon. The creature didn’t even flinch.

Thankfully, someone else came to Gwen’s rescue. The summoned [Winged Daughter of Balder] flew through the cavern and struck the beast in the eyes, desperately trying to save the princess of Avalon. The undead let out a screech and grabbed her with his maw, chewing her like a dog would a rat.

Was that how Gwen herself would die? Eaten by a monster?

“Gwen!” Morgane called her, bringing out a brown wand from her supplies. A magical item covered with earth runes, and the Tier VII spellcasting symbol.

“What is that?” the princess asked for confirmation, although she already recognized the device’s nature.

“A [Wand of Earthquake]!” Morgane shouted, while Walter Tye created as many walls of ice as possible between Hagen’s group and himself.

Gwen’s eyes widened in horror. “No.”

“It’s the only way to kill this thing!”

“You idiot!” Takeru shouted back, frantically keeping Hagen no Mercy at bay with arrows. “You will kill us all!”

Perhaps not. Gwen all but read her cousin’s mind. “Annie, Lady Yseult, how long can you sustain a barrier with your current SP?”

Annie instantly understood the princess' plan, but she was far from confident. “I’m… I don’t know!”

“We do not have much choice,” Lady Yseult replied, as the dragon finished tearing off the Winged Daughter’s head from her body.

Realizing that nothing else would stop the dragon, the princess decided to take the risk. “Everyone, to Morgane! Lady Yseult, Annie, summon barriers!”

The princess rushed towards her sister as quickly as she could. Behind her, the monstrous dragon let out a roar and pursued. Walter Tye and the others managed to break their own encirclement, gathering around Morgane.

“Chief, calm down!” Hagen argued, but the dragon trampled his lackey in his vicious rage. The dullahan’s body was tossed away like a ragdoll, discarded by his maddened master.

“Now!” Gwen ordered once everyone had assembled. Annie and Lady Yseult immediately raised barriers, shielding the group behind a powerful dome of light, while Morgane snapped the wand in half.

The effect was instantaneous.

The entire cave trembled, as a mighty tremor spread around Morgane, then another. The ceiling collapsed, tons of stones falling down.

Goblins, cowardly as ever, ran through the tunnels, alongside a few free-willed skeletons. The others - Hagen, the mummy, and the broken zombie swordsman - were buried beneath the debris and crushed by boulders. Meanwhile, the dragon powered through the falling ceiling, his sharp claws hitting the barriers again and again.

Finally, a rock the size of a house fell on its head, bringing it down. More stones poured from above, burying everyone.

For five minutes, the ceiling collapsed on the barriers, straining the spellcasters to their absolute limit. “Where did you buy that wand?” Gwen asked Morgane, as the tremors continued. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“A girl has her secrets.” She winked at her trueborn sister.

She must have asked Archmage Calvert for a favor or charmed a teacher into giving her that weapon. Gwen wasn’t amused, at all. “Good thinking, but if we survive, swear never to do it again.”

While her sister was naturally duplicitous and her quick thinking may have saved them all, the princess disliked surprises. Morgane took too many liberties behind Gwen’s back, and the [Paladin] had the feeling that one day, her tricks would backfire. She would accept a favor from the wrong person, or push her luck too far.

Finally, once the tremors ended with the group buried under the collapsed cave, the spellcasters partially dropped the barrier above them. Walter Tye used spells to meld the stone, opening a path through.

After minutes of tireless work, the group emerged from the debris to meet the sunlight.

The entire vault had collapsed on itself, alongside the caverns above it. The quake had opened a path all the way to the outside of the dungeon, leaving a giant hole above a ton of broken stones.

Gwen went out first, only to notice a humanoid shape emerging from the debris, battered, yet still ‘alive.’

The necromancer had regained his human form and crawled out of his would-be tomb.

The sorcerer and the princess faced one another in surprised silence. Before she could react, his hands lunged for her neck.

Gwen coughed as the inhumanly strong fingers tighten around her windpipe, strangling her. The necromancer’s eyes radiated hatred and fury behind his mask, his grudge animating him like a vicious ghost. Even now, with his SP exhausted, he had chosen to use his last strength for a pitiful shot at revenge rather than flee.

The princess tried to raise her sword to stab him, but her pommel felt slippery in her fingers. A chilling cold spreading through her body, her life fading away.

Medium [Frost] damage! Vitality check failed! You have been [Paralysed] by [Ghoul Tou—

Slash!

Annie’s blade of wind spell stabbed the undead through the heart, and his hold loosened. Regaining control of her body, Gwen tossed the necromancer to the side with a push and recovered her breath. That would leave marks.

Takeru shot an arrow at the corpse to be sure, and Lady Yseult cast a purifying spell to exorcise his vile spirit. When they were absolutely sure that the sorcerer had perished, the group gathered around his remains.

Gwen removed his mask.

She expected a familiar face. A city guard, a shopkeeper, a wanted criminal, Walter Tye himself.

Instead, she faced a rotting, balding corpse.

“Well, that’s disappointing,” Morgane said, the monster already turning to dust as time caught up with him.

“What did you expect?” Takeru shrugged. “Just another undead.”

Gwen couldn’t put her finger on what, but something felt off. Was it her paranoia flaring up, refusing to accept the simple truth? Or was it another trick? “Dig up the others,” she told the group, after the necromancer had become dust. “We need to be sure.”

They spent a good hour digging up corpses, finding the shattered, nearly unrecognizable body of Hagen No Mercy, crushed zombie limbs, and other remains. Even creatures that powerful couldn’t survive tons and tons of stones falling upon them.

It was a thankful coincidence that the quake had opened a hole to the outside, for all the tunnels leading to this room had been buried. Access to the lower levels had been condemned, trapping whatever surviving monsters to the darkness below. The goblins would starve, and the undead would take months, maybe years, before they managed to dig their way out.

Gwen would simply send soldiers to secure the area, but otherwise, Lyonesse’s days as a dungeon town were over.

“You will have to find a new occupation, my friend,” Lady Yseult told Walter Tye, although she said it with warmth.

“Fewer adventurers will hurt my business, but I can switch to remedies,” the shopkeeper shrugged it off.

“Or you could join the Academy,” Gwen said. She thanked the gods that she was mistaken on his account. “You have exceptional skills. The Kingdom may need them.”

“I am sorry, Your Highness,” Walter Tye replied. “But unless that is a direct order, I am just relieved to be done with this mess.”

“Tye is not made for this kind of life,” Annie said cheerfully.

Gwen couldn’t help but crack a smile. The tension had completely vanished with their unlikely victory.

Congratulations! For surviving a battle with a [Linnorm Demilich], you earned three levels in [Paladin of Tyr]! You earned the [Aesir Blessing] Class Perk!

+60 HP, +10 SP, +3 STR, +2 VIT, +2 SKI, +2 INT, +3 CHA, +3 LCK.

[Aesir Blessing]: Your devotion to the Aesir’s order has been rewarded with divine grace. You gain immunity to [Petrification], Resistance to [Fire], [Light], and [Frost]. Finally, you can speak and understand any language spoken in your presence, except the Five Calamities’ [Darktongue].

Walter Tye was right to feel relieved.

Gwen was glad too. Glad that this nightmare was all over. Glad that everyone made it out alive, that the necromancer perished alongside all of his major minions. Glad that this ended well.

…

Too well.

This kind of happy ending only happened in children fairy tales, not real life. And they lived happily ever after, the cynical part of her mind whispered to her mockingly. Their victory felt far too easy, unearned.

Something didn't add up with this scenario.

She couldn’t explain how, but Gwen knew, deep within herself, that she had been had.

In the depth of his sanctum, a necromancer watched a group of heroes congratulating themselves over their hard-won victory through a [Ghost Mirror].

“He’s going to say it,” Hagen of Vendemar said, watching the scene like a play. “Hear me out, he will say, ‘we need to seize the treasure.’”

“We need to seize the treasure,” Takeru insisted. “I’m sure they have hidden chests.”

“See?” the dullahan chuckled. “They never change.”

“Although the acting award goes to Laufey,” Ghostring said, observing the false Walter Tye discussing with Annie. The scene made the necromancer a bit uncomfortable. “Just as grumpy as the chief on his bad days.”

Their leader watched the scene with cold eyes, until at least they climbed their way out of the hole and left his home. Takeru complained all the way through, but saw reason in getting healing before looking for gold.

“Gentlemen,” the real Walter Tye faced his elites within his sanctuary, “It appears that I am officially dead.”

“He was too young!” Ghostring the ghost falsely cried. “Too young!”

“Our master’s death must be avenged!” Hagen declared. “Revenge!”

“Can somebody reattach my spine?” Duke asked, the only one not sharing the joke. Morgane’s fire blast had torn him in half, although as an elite zombie, only his head’s destruction could put him down for good. “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Soon,” Tye promised, taking a moment to review the play. “First I want this day to be a reminder why I never believed in diplomacy. I asked them to stand down, twice, and they still tried to destroy us.”

“Blame their culture,” Hagen replied. “They think they will get a nice afterlife if they die on their feet. To them, a fight is a win-win scenario.”

Which made Tye all the more determined to tear that system down.

In the end, it could have gone better, and it could have been worse. This whole mess had cost him many workers, magical items, decoys, and all of Level One; even orchestrating the entire play had been a logistical nightmare.

Tye could have slaughtered the group handily, especially after he identified which magical artifacts the princess carried on her person. But that would have brought Avalon’s full attention on the necromancer, and he would have spent his entire existence on the run afterward.

So Tye had set multiple redundancies. While he had never expected the group to be reasonable, he would have negotiated in good faith had they accepted to leave him be. Once diplomacy failed, he tried to turn the princess into a possessed vampire like her sister, but the [Amulet of Pendragon] protected her.

Had the cover-up not worked, or if the group had identified the corpses as decoys, Morgane would have launched a doomed assassination attempt on her sister out of ‘jealousy’ before escaping. This would have drawn the princess’ attention away from the dungeon, but would have only delayed the problem instead of solving it.

If nothing had worked, the necromancer would have scrapped the barrel’s bottom for ideas. Hagen had even suggested cloning the princess or replacing her with Laufey, in spite of the scrutiny.

It's so much easier when I can simply kill them with magic, Tye thought. He was a magical scientist first and foremost, not a tactician. He had no talent for intrigue.

They had learned much from this confrontation though. His [Linnorm Demilich], created from the remains of the dragon’s skull gifted by Mockingbird, had proven itself a formidable defense against intrusions; and Tye's custom [Switching Teleport] spell could be faked as a transformation. The alchemical vampire plague could be countered, and the Academy’s students lacked the levels needed to truly threaten the dungeon's elites. They had seen Lady Yseult in action and whatever the city’s priests could field.

And most importantly…

Walter Tye looked at the tiny amount of blood gathered in the glass cup on his desk. The precious fluid the princess had shed, once his undead dragon had hit her.

If his suspicions about Nastrond were correct, then the gods themselves had sealed it away from mortal eyes. Since the Royal Family of Avalon had been blessed by Allfather Odin himself with many privileges, including protecting Midgard from the Calamities...

Well, the necromancer might have found the key to this hidden city.

“They will return to look for loot,” Hagen predicted. “To claim the spoils of victory.”

“We will set up a false cache with trinkets,” Tye said. “Alongside some of my outdated notes, to make it credible.”

“What afterward?” Duke asked, Spook carrying him in his arms. “Everything below Level One is buried underground.”

“We lay low,” Tye said. “Because we now have the greatest shield of all: anonymity.”

For as far as the world was concerned, they no longer existed.