I looked down the decrepit hallway as I thought on what I knew. Most of what Eric had told me had been enlightening, if only in granting perspective on events. I considered the slave pens, the strange gem the guard held over the catatonic slaves, and the stone basin in the room with the portal.

I recalled the man who I had not noticed at first, when I was sent to the slave pens. He reminded me of Stravos in some ways, even now it was hard to bring details to mind about either man, a similarity I was not quite comfortable with.

Considering the undead abomination, these events seemed more likely to be connected to the Undead rather than the Archive. The Guard might then have had the Undead taint among them for some time.

It did seem likely that the Undead and Archive were at odds, especially with Eric's tale of killing undead in his Domain, and the Order's reaction to both was anything but amicable.

In some ways I felt that the actions of the Undead were quite a bit more straightforward than those of the Archive; what had the young man with the apple been trying to accomplish? If I had eaten it, would I have lost my connection to the Order and have experienced much what Eric had, but in reverse?

With Logate obviously the Domain of the Order, could that have worked? Considering Eric's story though, it did not seem impossible that the Archive might have a Domain somewhere inside Logate as well.

Perhaps the change that had happened to Eric as he entered the Deep was not too rare of an occurrence. I had the unpleasant mental image of chess pieces on a board being caught and changing colors. This seemed a rather apt metaphor for the Guard.

How the Undeath spread its influence seemed rather obvious, even if the original source was unknown; but where did the apple come from? Just how easy was it to remove someone from the sway of an Entity, was there a choice involved for those affected?

It seemed likely that I then held the Power of the Order inside me, but what happened to that Power when another kind was introduced?

What about something akin to Charles' wound? That seemed to have been killing him rather than changing him. While Undead was not something I had heard of before the swamp, the name itself and its creatures painted a rather bleak picture: those belonging to Undeath seemed to end up being not quite dead but not alive either, like the rabbit, the horse, and the Champion of Truth.

That made me wonder if the remaining Power I had not yet identified from Sense the Flow could be that of the Order. That would make a strange kind of sense, as I had felt it from just about everything, while it had been absent in the undead hamster.

The problem with this theory was that the Guards outside of the Dungeon had all held this Power too, in addition to the Undead taint. Might there be a transition of sorts, that I had not yet had experience with?

I was, to be honest, left knowing very little for sure. A rather common occurrence, I mused.

As Eric had been looking at me expectantly for some time now, I motioned down the hallway.

"We need to clear the first four floors of the Deep, if we could get started?" Eric seemed quite happy, despite my not so subtle manipulation. He nodded firmly with a big grin on this face, before he began to move down the hallway.

The nearest door was only a few steps away, but Eric moved past it without even a glance. Sense the Flow did not warn me of anything from inside the room, and so I found it likely that this was where Eric had come from previously.

He strode ahead until he reached the next door, just a few strides away from where the hallway turned sharply left.

From inside this room I could sense four clusters of Power, though having learned my lesson I did not assume there to be only this number of creatures inside, as the room might be larger than Sense the Flow could encompass.

The four creatures I could sense were all near to the ground, so I assumed them to be rather small, or possibly resting.

Eric waved a hand at me to stop where I was, as he kept moving up to where the hallway turned. There he quickly peeked around the corner, before returning to me.

It stood to reason that there would be patrols on this floor, just as on the latter ones. The idea of getting caught by a patrol while fighting a room did not seem particularly pleasant.

Eric knelt at the floor outside the door and began to speak under his breath, hands waving. He was clearly casting a spell of some kind.

What he did was different than any of my own spells, as I could not sense a spell structure form in front of him. Tendrils of Mana flowed out of his hands into a circle on the floor, but this circle lacked everything I expected from a structure.

I tried to match what I was sensing to my previous study of Minor Heal, I considered that perhaps I had been aware of things outside of the scope of Sense the Flow when I had been in control of the spell. But even this failed to explain what I was sensing here.

Even though it might be possible that the spell structure itself was something I could not sense, I was quite clear on the fact that the structure had been filled out by Mana before the spell had been completed. As such, I should be able to pick up on the spell structure Eric formed by now, if only in part.

Despite my confident reasoning though, this did not come to pass. Eric's spell completed and a hexagonal shape formed on the floor, from which a huge insect crawled out, surprising me.

As the shape on the floor faded away, leaving the insect behind, I wondered if my spell casting was different from what others did.

This idea did not sit well with me, spell structure was not a concept I had come up with on my own after all.

I studied the floor intently and with focus I could eventually make out a structure, just like I had in the small village, what seemed such a long time ago.

Just like then, this structure seemed frail and hard to discern. I wondered, now even more curious, if I could learn a spell from studying such a structure. Frustratingly enough, this spell was no where near as simple as the spell I had studied back then, and I could not actually understand what it did.

I crouched down, brows furrowed. Had the Mana somehow pooled over the spell structure and thus obscuring it from me? How had it ended up on the floor?

Confused, I shook my head as the strange thing that Eric had summoned drew my attention by shuffling sideways.

The creature was a beetle of some kind. It carried a thick looking black carapace with a red tint to it, tapering to a squarish head with eyes in several rows of four with a final cluster going up over the ridge of its head. It had mandibles similar to that of a bulldog ant leading to a mouth like that of a lamprey. Its legs were short and hinged backwards while situated under the bulky body rather than out to the sides.

My study was cut short, as Eric opened the door and his summoned beetle surged into the room beyond.

Keeping my misadventures in mind, I sidled carefully up to the door and peered inside.

The room was at a guess four by four meters in size, with a giant pile of garbage in the middle. I could see bits of torn cloth, rotten wood, and a lot of unidentifiables.

To complete the quaint picture were four giant rats, three of which were engaged in combat with the summoned beetle, and the fourth had its beady little eyes set on me as it rushed across the floor.

As the rat approached, I decided it would be a waste to use any of my enchantments on something this trivial.

I took a step sideways and back as I prepared the spell structure for Acid Splash, its range was short, but it was certainly enough to stop something like this in its tracks.

Before I could do more than bring the structure to mind, my Golem stepped out in front of me and into the doorway. Its foot came down hard on the head of the giant rat, pulping it with a crunch.

I let my spell structure fade as I tilted my head to try to see my Golem's face, not quite sure what I expected to see there. It worried me that it had progressed so swiftly, it had only been hours ago that it could not even walk on its own, and now it performed violence of its own accord.

Though admittedly, it might have been my own intent shaping its behavior. On further thought, one could argue that violence was as basic a concept as they come, it would be hard to find anywhere in nature without strife. Aggression was most certainly not limited to the astute.

Eric moved into the room and drew my attention away from my Golem. Judging by how quiet it had gotten his summoned beetle had defeated the three other rats.

I looked into the room after him, to see the beetle with its head buried in a mass of flesh that might have been a rat at some point, but it was hard to tell by now.

Your Golem has contributed in a Dungeon Room victory! You gain 1 Experience!

Your Golem has contributed in a Dungeon Room victory! Your Golem gain 5 Experience!

Eric looked around the room for a moment before letting out a long sigh and leaving once more.

"Were you looking for something in particular? This does not look like a place where anything of value is likely."

Eric glanced back at me over his shoulder as he answered, "Yes, sometimes there are small chests left behind in the rooms. They can contain simple things like clothes, food, or water."

I nodded my understanding as we began to move down the hallway, back to the corner.

Eric leaned forward just as before, only to freeze and then start to scramble backwards, as I could hear the scraping of claws against wood.

Something was coming our way. By the sound of it, more rats.

I looked down into my satchel with annoyance. Enchantments were far faster and more convenient than spells in a fight, but I did not have all that many left.

Even so, I fished out half of my remaining Stones of Fire Burst, keeping two in one hand and one in the other. That, along with a cast of Acid Splash should hopefully be sufficient.

I hoped I was not being overconfident, but I still had a hard time seeing these rats as a challenge. A nuisance perhaps, but not a challenge.

Several large rats, the length of my forearm skittered around the corner, loosing their footing with their speed and gliding sideways as they fought for purchase.

I was not about to wait for them to get ready; I tossed my Stones of Fire Burst in front of me, while also beginning the short cast of Acid Splash.

The Fire Bursts splattered over a rat each, and they let out high pitched screeches while burning, the stench of cooked rat permeating the air.

The remaining three rats had rushed closer as I finished my cast, but even so I took a step forward to be sure they were in range, before the spell structure solidified.

A splash of acid fell on the two nearest rats, with only a few drops reaching the trailing one.

My Golem stepped forward as if on cue and stopped the mostly unhurt rat with a vicious stomp. It then rushed forward to deal with the rats that were writhing in the fire in the same fashion.

I watched this with mixed emotions, as the acid cowered rats stopped moving and I canceled the spell.

The Golem returned to me, where it crouched down to watch the rats who died by acid. Its blank face and the dead creatures made the whole scene seem rather macabre.

I did not quite know what to think of the Golem's behavior. While it had been helpful, the last few minutes had a creepy undertone that made me uncomfortable.

Mana.

Mana: 150/650

It felt longer, but with the Mana I had left, I could not have held the Acid Splash for more than a few seconds.

You have contributed to a Dungeon Encounter victory! You gain 24 Experience!

Your Golem has contributed to a Dungeon Encounter victory! Your Golem gain 79 Experience!

Congratulations! Your Golem has advanced to level 2!

Choose an Attribute to sacrifice!

Intelligence

Transfer one Intelligence to your Golem.

Dexterity

Transfer one Dexterity to your Golem.

Agility

Transfer one Agility to your Golem.

I looked out over the rat corpses and the Golem, still crouched over half melted remains.

Somehow, I did not feel that congratulations were appropriate. Would I lose an Attribute every time my Golem gained a level?