Jennifer groaned, clutching her head. A strong throbbing pain coursed through the base of her neck, sending pulses of agony throughout her body. She winced, picking herself up from the ground. Dark cavern walls greeted her, glowing with a soft blue sheen making it bright enough to see clearly, if dimmer than she was used to. Wet hair clung to her neck and her back was drenched in sweat. The smell of blood and dirt touched her nose as another spike of pain coursed through her head.

“W-what happened?” she mumbled, clutching her head.

“You almost died, that's what happened,” a voice came from nearby. She turned to find the silver-haired man sitting further up the tunnel, leaning against the walls with his sword on his lap. “A scale-hound got you, tricky bastards have sharp claws and teeth,” he said, getting up from where he sat. Through the tears in his clothes, she saw the chainmail inside, the small inscriptions on it almost invisible to her senses.

“Are we—”

“Yes. We are in the dungeon. Yes. A dungeon break happened, and yes, I killed the scale-hounds,” the man said, eyeing her.

She gulped, having what she feared confirmed. She looked around but there was no visible exit nearby. They seemed to be in a small section in the cavern walls. Somewhere around the corner and out of sight of whatever roamed these caverns.

“Can we get out?” she asked. The swordsman didn’t reply looking around the area for something. She watched him move about, his footsteps almost completely silent. He pulled a dagger out and began drawing something through the dirt. She watched him work and then after a while, she felt a small pulse of mana go through the area.

“The entrance has collapsed, and any other way into the dungeon will be fiercely guarded. I do not know what kind of wards this city has but I assume anything coming out from the dungeon will be killed on sight. It’s not rare to find shape-shifting monsters in dungeons after all,” he paused letting the words sink in before he looked her in the eye, and put his hands in front of her face.

“There are two things you can do. I have put a silencing and obfuscation ward here and you can wait in hopes of being rescued or eventually being found and killed as the wards run out. In about a full day’s time. Or you can come with me, further into the dungeon, it will be far more dangerous but stick close to me and pay attention and I will make sure you do not die.”

She stared at him, words failed to come to her. “You...do you even know what, I—” she paused her eyes glossing over and she cursed, wiping them in a hurry. She saw something like guilt pass over his face for a brief second.

Jennifer clenched her fists, grinding her teeth. Deep breaths Jennifer, he’s the only one who can get you out.

She turned to face the man and glared at him. “Why...why would you run into this place?! Why go deeper inside? Do you want to die? ” she shouted, her breath turning labored.

“That is none of your business, you decided to run after me on your own.” the man said.

“But you ran away without paying!” she shouted and put her hand over her mouth, realizing that she was still inside the dungeon and that she could very much die here.

The man paused for a second. “Fine. Here,” he said, throwing a glass vial with a red liquid in it at her. She caught the bottle, almost dropping it.

“Drink half of it, leave the rest for later.”

She looked at the liquid, clearly a healing potion and from the strong mana vapors coming from it, a strong potion as well. She sipped it, frowning a bit at the taste of herbs and salty water, and the after taste of whatever magical reagents had been added.

Good to know that expensive potions still taste like crap.

The base of her neck along with her shoulder and everywhere else she seemed to have been injured started to itch. After a while, a cool sensation covered her from the inside and her headache started to fade.

The man went up and picked up the knife, the ward rippling as it faded. “You’re coming with me. Now, take this dagger and follow behind. And. Stay. Quiet."

She picked up the dagger, careful not to make any noise as she shuffled and stuffed the vial of potion in her belt and followed behind the man.

❖❖❖

“Mana Bolt!” Jennifer shouted. The blue bolt launched off and struck the large vermin, staggering it. It was enough time for the silver man - Irwys Silveran as he had introduced himself - to sever its head, killing the monster instantly.

Mana Bolt (Spell)

Arcane

Tier 1

A Bolt of pure mana that is able to pierce creatures.

Jennifer steadied her breath, preparing another mana bolt. She stood nearby with her knife in her hand as she waited for Irwys to deal with the larger pack of vermin around him. Dire-Rats, a whole group of them. They were big, almost the size of a large dog and these ones had poisonous teeth and claws.

She shuddered thinking what would happen to someone who got bit by these enough times. That’s how they die here. Alone and in agony. Eaten by monsters.

She watched Irwys kill the largest rat swiftly and with their leader dead, the others scuttled off. “Hopefully that’s the last of them,” he said, wiping the dark blood off of his sword.

“I doubt it,” Jennifer replied.

They both made their way further in, leaving the monster corpses behind them. They would either be eaten by other monsters or be absorbed by the dungeon itself. What a waste of good monster parts.

She turned towards Irwys. “How deep are we?”

He stopped to consider her question, taking a look around once. “Not too deep yet. I’ve been avoiding any larger pathways to keep away from the frenzied monster horde rising from the deeper regions.”

He took out a map and started to fiddle around with his ring. The device began to glow slightly, she suspected it was some form of a navigation device, but the runes she saw were too involved and way out of her comprehension.

Definitely too expensive for most people to buy unless they are high-level adventurers.

The last hour had made it clear that Irwys was anything but an adventurer. He fought like a swordsman used to human opponents. She remembered hearing some of the adventurers talking about the tells of an adventurer and a warrior.

Jennifer felt a presence from her [Enhanced Mana Sense], on the ground. Surprised, she focused on her skill and threw her knife in the direction the sensation came from. A hissing sound greeted her as a black lizard with oily scales and glowing eyes looked back at her.

Irwys swung his sword at it but the cavern was too small for a proper strike and the monster faded back into the shadows again.

Lesson learned: Never turn off your mana sense and never let your guard down. Also, shadow lizard things are scary.

“Thank you. I think we're close, follow me,” Irwys said and walked ahead.

She nodded, not asking what they were close to. Like many other questions, she decided not to ask. He didn’t have any reason to bring her along and so she had decided to trust him as well for now.

As they walked, Jennifer kept her eye out for any more freaky lizards, poison rats, or whatever else the dungeon had in store for them. She noticed Irwys stop in front of a dead-end in the cavern walls. He touched his ring again and then pressed it against the wall. Her eyes widened as she watched his hand pass through the wall.

An Illusionary wall.

She watched him go through the wall and then come back out. He looked down at his hands with an amused expression on his face.

“Follow me,” he said and she nodded, her heart pounding. The realization that she was on a delve, even if through strange circumstances out of her control finally settled on her. Part of her was excited at the prospect. She had heard stories of the magic of untold eons hidden in caverns like these and of legends being born from fated encounters. The more mature adult in her warned against the traps and lures, and of the deaths of many better adventurers who came before her.

Jennifer gulped, making her way past the illusionary wall. A ruin lay behind it, the path made of bricks cracked from age and walls with depictions of pictures and words faded away with time.

“As impressive as this place might be, there are probably still a few monsters on our trail, and I don’t know about you but I would rather not spend my time gawking at ancient walls.”

Jennifer huffed but followed behind the man. She watched as the walls of the cavern slowly expanded, pillars rising to support the now tall ceiling. There were runes carved onto the walls and onto the pillars. Words she did not recognize from anywhere. Most of them showed a woman residing high on her throne, with black creatures below her standing guard.

A sharp crack pulled her attention to the front. A pillar blocked their path, behind which a gate stood, reaching all the way to the roof.

Irwys climbed the pillar and she followed behind him deciding to crawl through the gap in the corner instead. After an awkward shuffle and some minor cursing at the annoying pillar, she made her way out.

She walked up to Irwys, watching the door in front of them. It looked to be made of stone with metal engravings on it. As two beams of blue metal ran on both sides. The smaller pieces were laid out in a weird pattern near what looked to be a key slot.

“What now?” she asked the man who promptly ignored her. Annoyed, she turned to look at the door. There were semi-circular lines of metal that were arranged to form letters. She felt her skills point her towards a few of them, around the key area.

Curiously she decided to touch one of them and was surprised when she could move it around on the gate.

“It’s a lock, a puzzle, or something similar, but I think it leads to the way inside,” she said, turning back to look at the swordsman. He looked at the gate nodding.

“Can you open it?”

“No, of course not. I can’t even read this,” she replied.

The man muttered, fiddling with his ring as he walked up and started moving around the pieces. Jennifer walked back down and decided to take a seat near the pillar, still keeping a lookout for any monsters that may be hiding with her [Enhanced Mana Sense].

For a while, watching Irwysgrow increasingly frustrated as he tried to open the gate.

“Try making that image?” She said, pointing at the depictions of the woman and her black guardians on the wall.

“Why? I don’t see a reason for it,” Irwys said.

“Well, because watching you try to read and recreate those characters is boring and this place seems to be a place of worship or something so it might work? And there are some symbols up top that seem to repeat for wherever the woman is shown on the walls”

He paused at her explanation, muttering something in his own language before he went back to it. She watched him work, almost forgetting that she was currently inside the dungeon. It was an odd relief from the tensed-out bundle of nerves she had been for the past few hours. A weird pulse of mana tingled her senses, pulling her eyes towards the gate.

“Hey, hey hey! Stop!” she shouted running up to the gate. “I feel something, there’s an enchantment on this."

Irwys gave her a flat look betraying annoyance. "I could tell, and if you have nothing—"

"No! You don't get it. Just," Jennifer paused letting the sensations carefully go through her again. “Bring that part down,” she said, pointing at what was supposed to be the woman. Walking up, she moved around the pieces, her Mana Sense telling her of the increasing flow of complex enchantment starting up on the gate.

Suddenly, with a click, the pieces started to shift, lines branching out from the woman at the throne, forming a complex enchantment. A blue glow traveled through it, making its way across the door as the hall shook, the sounds of gears turning echoing through the caverns as the gate slid open. On the other side was a pristine chamber covered in marble and glass. She walked inside marveling at the beautiful chamber, noticing the statue of a woman at its far end sitting on a peculiar throne, that seemed as if it was made of wands, a huge book of stone sitting in her lap.

She felt the mana here, moving serenely around her. It was dense, yet not uncomfortably so. There was something about the way this place was constructed that made it seem cut off from the rest of the world.

“Is this...still inside the dungeon? Where are we?” Jennifer turned to look at Irwys and found him looking around in awe as well.

“I can’t say. There is magic here older than most places I’ve seen. I do not understand how no one had found this place yet, with magic this strong.”

Suddenly a loud rumble caught her attention. An ogre sat in the distance rubbing its eyes lazily as if it had just woken up. She froze as the beast turned to look at her, its expression morphing into a scowl. Its eyes were full of hatred as it gazed upon the intruders in its home and Jennifer felt a chill down her spine. The beast got up, four muscular red arms at its side.

Jennifer stumbled as the beast roared, beating its chest with all four of its massive appendages. It turned towards them, snorting once as it charged.

She bit the inside of her mouth. Sera take me, I am so dead.