“Seriously, Lee, what were you thinking back there?! You could have been seriously injured! Or worse!”

Leone let out a long sigh, her shoulders slumping as she looked down at the dirt path that led back into the village. She watched her feet, sturdy leather boots moving steadily across the ground, her chestnut brown hair hanging down into her face to obscure her expression from the others. Every step seemed to take years somehow, her feet moving on their own and almost without any will on her part to do so. She felt as if she were just a passenger, sitting back and watching from a distance.

That was just how often she had walked the path from the village out to the ruins, she knew that much, but after her experience, it felt especially strange.

If she had to guess it had been a good thirty minutes or so since they had left the ruins, and Luka had yet to stop chewing her out over the ordeal. It was so embarrassing that she could hardly stand it, her chest feeling as if it were swollen with heat as water and pressure began stinging her eyes. Crying was the last thing she wanted to do, but it felt like she might at any moment.

Running out of the tunnels screaming had been embarrassing enough on her own, but the welcome that she came back to? Yulia yelling at her for losing the magic stone, Luka yelling at her for running away, Nicol crying about how she could have died…

Leone felt so guilty she could hardly stand it. In the moment all she had been thinking was that she wanted to be brave, to be like her father, to impress Luka a bit, but in the aftermath? She had been forced to face just how selfish she had been and how much it had backfired right into her face.

She had run screaming from a couple of badgers, unusually large badgers but badgers all the same, and she had lost something that wasn’t hers to lose in the process. She had frightened her little sister, leaving Nicol worried that Leone wouldn’t return the same way their father had never returned from battle. Worse yet, Luka had been far from impressed and instead had ended up treating her like a child.

She was left all too aware of all of her flaws, and all she could do was accept the tongue lashing with apologies and promises to not do it again.

And yet…

Leone wanted to go back in. There was a strange need to prove herself that had begun to grow inside of her chest, and with each step that brought her closer to the village and further from the ruins that feeling only seemed to grow. She didn’t want to be a coward, after all. She was a Knight, descended from a long line of actual knights, and even if she could never become one due to her constant bouts of illness she at least wanted to display the ideals of one.

Running out of a potential dungeon screaming bloody murder was certainly not indicative of the ideals she wanted to have.

“Look, Lee…” Luka let out a long groaning sound, his head rolling back as he rubbed his neck and looked everywhere but at her directly. The tone of his voice brought Leone out of her thoughts, her head lifting so that she could look at him properly and try to understand what had him sounding so apologetic and embarrassed. She couldn’t see his face directly, but she could see a certain darkness to his cheeks that he didn’t normally have. “I know I’m being hard on you, but it’s just because I care, okay?” He muttered.

“Oh.”

Leone was glad that he wasn’t looking at her because she was suddenly highly aware of just how red she had gotten. Her face felt like it was burning, a searing heat that distracted her from everything else she was feeling. Her need to prove herself for some unknowable reason was left behind, tossed onto the roadside, and all she could do was smile stupidly at Luka.

Beautiful, beautiful, Luka. Strong, handsome, curly-haired Luka, the only person in the village she could imagine marrying, and the only person she could imagine her father approving of if he were still alive. Just knowing that he cared, no matter what form of care it was, left her feeling completely weightless and breathless.

He had spent the last thirty minutes ranting and raving about how stupid she had been, and suddenly Leone couldn’t care less about that. All that mattered was what he had just said.

Yulia rolled her eyes at the sight, muttering a quiet “yuck” about the entire situation under her breath. Adults, or in the case of Luka and Leone, near adults, were always gross as far as she was concerned.

“Can we please get back to focusing on what matters here? The fact that my magic stone was lost? That’s a big problem!” She yelled, her hands on her hips even though she was lingering at the back of their little group and no one was really looking at her.

“Honestly, Yulia? You really shouldn’t have had it to begin with.” Luka didn’t so much as spare her a glance, something which had her stomping her feet extra hard in an attempt to gain some attention. Not even Nicol looked at her, which only made her even angrier than before, her cheeks puffing out as she pouted.

Leone looked back, brushing hair from her face so that Yulia could see the look of concern that was being sent her way more clearly. She didn’t like that expression, not one bit, even if Leone still looked a little embarrassed by everything that had happened. She had actually preferred it quite a bit when the older girl had seemed more ashamed. As far as Yulia was concerned Leone had deserved to feel bad about the situation, and if it were up to her she would yell more about it.

“Wasn’t that your mother’s stone anyway? Why did she let you take it with you?”

Just like that, it was Yulia’s turn to go red in the face, her body growing stiff as she puffed her face up even more in an attempt to hide what she was really feeling. “Nevermind that! What are you going to do to replace it?” She yelled the words, perhaps in an attempt to hide the fact she was trying to change the subject.

Luka groaned again, muttering to himself as Leone frowned. “You didn’t ask, did you?” She asked, pausing for a moment to absorb Yulia’s silence before sighing. “You stole it, Yuli? Really? How could you?”

The disappointment was written clearly on Leone’s face and in her voice, and it caused Yulia to grow even more defensive, yelling out, “I’m not the one who lost it!”

“It wouldn’t have gotten lost if you hadn’t stolen it.”

“I knew I should have been the one to go in, not you!”

Luka stopped walking, and the very sight of his broad back tensing up caused both girls to grow quiet instantly. Normally he only grew still like that if they were in danger from something, but instead of drawing his sword and preparing to defend them, he turned to face them, frowning harshly as he did. “It doesn’t matter who stole it or who lost it,” he said, “Yulia, Leone, stop arguing about this. You’re both going to get in trouble when we get back and you know it.”

“If anyone is getting in trouble it’s going to be her, not me,” Yulia grumbled softly beneath her breath as she crossed her arms and looked away from the other three.

In the end, Luka was right. When they got back both Yulia and Leone did, in fact, get in trouble.

As much as she complained and tried to point the blame Leone’s way, Yulia had in fact been the one to take the stone in the first place, and there was no way her mother was going to let her live that fact down. “You’re much too old to think you can get away with stealing from me” had been the chief complaint from Yulia’s mother, and the reason why the young girl was tasked with extra chores until the family could afford to buy another magic stone.

Leone didn’t escape from getting into any more trouble, either. Though Yulia’s mother didn’t blame her for anything that happened she certainly caught an earful from her grandfather when she made her way home. He was none too pleased to hear that she had run away into a possible dungeon with nothing to protect herself with, and somehow managed to be even less pleased than that to find out she had lost a rare magic stone in the process.

She sat on a stool at a table in his study, head in her hands to hide her tears, as he poured over the family finances to see if they would be able to pay the Garner family back for their loss. Magic stones could only be mined from dungeons, after all, and the nearest one was several days away from their village. It was an expensive item, and there was no knowing if it could be retrieved. If it really were a tunnel full of badgers then it was likely safe, but if it actually had been a dungeon? Then the magic stone would have long been devoured.

“Do you remember the layout?”

Leone sniffled softly, her head still buried in her hands as she listened to the subtle rustle of paper that she assumed to be coming from the financial ledger. There was a tap on her shoulder, and reluctantly she lifted her head and wiped her face clean, her unusually pale face blotchy and red from where she had been crying.

Spread out on the table was a dungeon map, an ancient one as far as she was concerned, the paper yellowed and brittle to the point it was crumbling around the edges. She blinked at the sight of it and carefully wiped her face with her sleeves.

“Is this the Castle Dungeon?” She asked quietly, her eyes roaming across the carefully detailed layout of walls and traps, delicate script indicating what monsters could be found on the floor as well as what materials could be gathered from various areas.

Given that the dungeon had been destroyed when her great-great-grandfather was still young she had never seen a map of it before, but considering what had happened earlier today she couldn’t imagine that it would be a dungeon map of any other place.

Her grandfather carefully weighed the corners of the map down with books so that it laid flat, his fingers brushing the fragile paper with care. “The first floor of it, yes. Do you recognize anything? Did the tunnel look anything like this?” He asked.

Leone frowned down at the map, her forehead crinkling with thought as she studied the lines. The dungeon entrance was in the same place, but that was where the similarities ended. The castle dungeon continued in a straight line from the entrance before it opened into a room marked as the Offering Room, a place where gifts could be left in exchange for temporary blessings from the Dungeon Core.

She shook her head after a moment, causing her grandfather to sigh. “No, the entrance immediately split into two paths. I took the right one, and it sort of meandered and twisted off until it led to a large room. There were three tunnels going off of that one, and the one I took lead to a smaller room.” Leone explained, her fingers hovering over the map as she pointed out the differences to him.

“It really sounds like it could be another dungeon,” he said, but he didn’t sound very happy about the idea. He got up from the table, sighing again as he made his way to a small lockbox, which he began to open with a key that hung around his neck. “It looks like there’s only one way to find out.”

It was only the second time in her life that she was seeing the Appraisal Stone, an especially rare magical gem that had been passed down in her family for generations, and it caused Leone to practically wiggle in anticipation.

She watched, wide-eyed and her breath held, as her grandfather held the deep blue stone in his hand and readied a paper for her information to be displayed onto. The magic circle he drew on one corner was simple enough, but that didn’t stop Leone from being impressed by the entire process. It seemed to her that remembering the proper placement of the symbols must have been difficult.

When it was finally done he set the stone into the center of the circle carefully and stepped back, making sure his hand didn't linger on the stone for too long. “Alright, place your hand on the stone and hold it there until the words appear.”

Leone was all too eager to do just that. It had been years since she had seen her statistics for the first time, a bunch of numbers that hardly made sense to her but that somehow managed to explain how much energy she had and how strong she was.

Ordinarily, stats didn’t matter much but she was a Knight and born especially weak, so it had been necessary at the time to check to see if there was anything hiding in her stats that could explain the situation. It had been a rough blow to learn that would never be suited to becoming a knight as her father had been, but Leone had learned to deal with that disappointment over time.

At the very least she had told herself that she had learned to deal with it. Now that she was about to view her stats again she found herself hoping that something had changed.

Leone Knight [Human] Lvl. 2

Female

Title: Dungeon Discoverer

HP: 15/15

SP: 5/15

MP: 10/10

Str: 5

Spd: 8

Def: 4

Skills: [Dungeon Explorer]

Status: Weakened

She was still as weak as ever it seemed, but Leone couldn’t even begin to focus on that fact when there were two new editions to her sheet than there had been before. Not only had she gained a title, but she had gained a skill as well, something that could only be done by exploring a dungeon.

“I have the [Dungeon Explorer] skill…” She almost whispered the words, she just couldn’t believe it. The very skill she needed to get stronger was there on her sheet, black ink on white paper staring her in the face.

[Dungeon Explorer] was a skill that granted someone the ability to get stronger by exploring and fighting inside of a dungeon. It was a skill that was granted to anyone who ventured into a dungeon, but in Leone’s case, it was a skill that could turn her life around. If she trained inside of a dungeon then she could overcome her naturally weakened state and possibly even become a knight, something that she wanted with all of her heart.

“Not only that, you have the [Dungeon Discoverer] title. That means you were the first one in here. It’s a newborn dungeon.” Her grandfather sounded stunned, his voice nowhere near as gruff as usual as he stared at her statistic sheet. “I’ve never heard of a new dungeon appearing in the same place as an old one… The area should have been emptied of usable mana by the old one.”

“Does this mean I can name the new dungeon?” Leone asked, looking up at her grandfather with such an eager and happy expression that he couldn’t continue to be serious. A smile stretched across his darkened and leathery skin, soft and warm in the face of his grandaughter’s happiness, and he nodded.

Leone was grinning as she looked down at the paper again. “I know just what I’ll call it!”