They say you can never go home again. It's weird to apply that to a dungeon that I was in not that long ago, but at the same time... more than I could possibly have imagined, the place just wasn't the same.

On my last trip through the Dungeon, of course, I'd been through this biome feeling pretty confident, but it was a different kind of confidence than what I had now. Last time, I felt like I was proving something by coming back, and now...

Now, even as I discovered that the Administrator could apparently tweak the Dungeon as I ran through it to give me a challenge, there just... wasn't one.

I'd spent a lot of time in the savanna, as I said. It was a wide-open biome with a lot of scrub bushes, and on that first run through, I'd certainly felt like death might be waiting to ambush me at just about any time. I practiced a whole lot with stealth, with assassination, telekinesis... all the skills I had, really, getting to know what it was like to be a Dungeoneer. The 6-10 biome I'd kind of rushed through, high on the twisted sense of power and hatred that I had building in me... but the savanna felt real, or real-er than the Dungeon had before, and so it kind of grounded me for a bit.

I didn't exactly grind levels--I mean, I did. But it was also kind of the start of me not thinking about levels as being the thing, you know? As I walked through it now, I could spot a familiar looking bush--maybe the same, maybe not, but it looked like a place I remembered. There had been two hyenas just around the edge of it, and I was trying to work up the courage to jump them.

It felt real, and the most likely outcome in a real fight would be that I would lose. So I squatted, in stealth, behind a bush, trying to keep my breathing even, trying to find courage. I knew I could beat them one on one, and I'd survived being ambushed by a pair before, but just willingly jumping into that still felt terrifying. Those things were fast, and I could, at the time, still recall those jaws coming at me.

I did it anyway. Spoiler alert: I survived.

The first four levels of the Dungeon, I'd been completely suicidal. That was where I killed someone just because they had their back turned--just because they couldn't stop me. When the first boss couldn't beat me, and when I solo killed him twice in a row, I went mad with power and stormed through the next five biomes like a hurricane. And here...

The last time through the Dungeon, I was thinking about other things--I was thinking about my job, about the dark things coming later, about proving myself. Now, coming out here just to talk with the Administrator again and receive a quest, I was stuck by a strange sense of melancholy.

This biome had pulled me out of the darkness--not entirely, or I wouldn't have killed again afterwards. But compared to who I was when I entered it, dual wielding wave-blade swords, constantly seething like my nerves were on fire... I'd become something a little more refined. A little calmer, a little better.

It had been, for a while, home. And now I understood that I could never go back.

It wasn't the theme of the place. If--assuming someday--I ever became an Administrator, like Kalamitus and the Administrator seemed to want me to be, I could recreate the looks. But like a second childhood, this had been a place where I transformed, and that transformation would never happen again. My memories, my feelings, they all centered around me growing into a new role, here. Having grown into it... the place itself was just an empty husk left behind.

A swarm of hyenas came after me, and I let Merry play with pyschokinesis to crush them. That wasn't entirely trivial, but it might as well I... kind of needed something to distract me, emotionally, and that did the trick; I was getting very grumpy and lonely as I considered the place, and Merry was also thinking hard about things. So, it kind of reset us a little.

I didn't spend long on the floor, or the next, but I didn't rush, either. Merry, for her part, started looking around, too, but I don't think the place meant anything to her. Of course... she wasn't really living in them, was she?

Mostly, I'm thinking about what I saw, she admitted as my brain ground on that thought a little bit. The Administrator, and the rabbit fairy, and the dead guy she ate... Merry gave a mental sigh, or something that was supposed to be a sigh. When she--

I don't really want to talk about that right now. With all due respect to Merry, and I knew she had some processing to do too, I could look in pretty much any direction in the tower and see an afterimage of a fairy surrounded by a ring of human organs, organs that turned to smoke and... We will talk, I promise, it's just...

Right, no, I get it. It's just... Merry sighed, again. It's... like I'm well fed, being here with you, and she wasn't. She--

I don't want to talk about it. I... I studied Floor 14, though we weren't quite to the den where the boss would be yet, as I sort of casually strolled towards it. The encounter rates were much higher than they'd been the earlier times through, and I could swear enemy levels jumped up as soon as I got in range of them, but none of that made the place challenging. That was good, because one some level, I was still pretty distracted. I shook my head, trying to remember that I had just declared Merry my sister, my family, and not just a parasite living in me. I don't want to, but...

Merry gave me a very quick mental hug. I think spider-dude was also... they don't have much to eat down there. And... I dunno. I know, I don't want to talk about it either, but... it's not just... She sighed, again. I don't want to bother you. But... if they could go to war to get food, I know they would.

That caused a shiver to go down my spine. Herman had said as much, before, and his words drifted through my thoughts. We won't have a chance to take over your planet at all until...

Merry poked her head up so I could see her plainly, and she looked very worried for me. I don't want that, Jay. I don't want them to starve, but a war will destroy us all. But if they're starving... and there can't only be a few of them. In that place, in the darkness... there were a lot of threads, a lot of places to travel to, a lot of places to hide.

I shivered, again, my feet stopping a little ways away from where the boss encounter would be. I could probably--definitely--have one shot the Flame Lion, now, but... it still didn't feel right to enter the arena while distracted. Not while thinking about the end of the world, horrific murder...

I shook my head to clear it and squatted down, thinking things through for a minute before having to admit to myself, quietly, that there was nothing for it, not now, not here.

I stepped into the Flame Lion's den.

I was a little surprised at what I found in there. First, but perhaps least surprisingly, the Administrator had found a way to tweak the boss fight; instead of fighting one flame lion, I was suddenly faced with literally dozens of the things, each of somewhat higher level than they were supposed to be. That wasn't... that wasn't really all that big of a deal, I found out pretty quickly, as I could still one-shot any one of them, and my telekinesis was more than high enough to crowd control them, and even resist their flame breath for a while.

No, the other big surprise was a corpse.

It had decayed, but it wasn't gone. I made it a priority, throwing large cats with flaming manes and bad breath around the arena as I made a bee-line for it. It was no longer at the Intact stage, meaning it was going to lose levels when brought back--and indeed, the durability was low enough that the person behind it was probably just a little shy of dying outright. From what I knew (mostly, wikipedia) that meant the corpse had been here for many hours, maybe almost a day.

From my inventory, I found the corpse doll to be a young woman--too young for me, but cute--that was some kind of straight-up sword warrior class. I only glanced at her info, because for all that the flame lion horde were not hard to handle, it did take my attention to do so. Their increased levels didn't come with any new significant abilities, which was a disappointment, and they didn't significantly improve their tactics or work together. And while they could surround me and pump a bunch of flame breath at me...

Well, I still wasn't taking the fight seriously.

I flexed my telekinesis to grab a dozen lions each in a stranglehold and pick them up off the ground. The creatures had enough survival sense to be intimidated, but they weren't sentient--they couldn't negotiate or give up the fight, so all they could really do was keep trying to kill me, and they did. I ended up using the choking lions as flails to beat up other lions, though it was difficult to manipulate that many mental "arms" in anything but the most awkward, piecemeal way. I could use two of the mental arms at a time like they were my real ones, and keep the others doing simple things like holding the choke, and I could maintain a barrier--in short, I was doing a lot, but I wasn't able to go full octopus. For all that I had improved my control a lot by fixing the interface end of the skill, my brain itself had never developed a way to do more than two hand-like things at once.

Not yet.

Still, if the dead swordswoman had been able to see me, she would probably not have thought I was frustrated and feeling incapable. All of the dozen flame lions I was holding died being used as a weapon, and I picked up new ones as soon as each vanished. The lions clawed at my mental projections, shot fire at me... a lot of things, but none of it helpful. Although I had my Executioner out, just in case, it ended up being of no help whatsoever.

When the battle cleared, I found that the Administrator had funneled all of ...whatever budget he had, given those many creatures, into a single piece of loot:

FLAME LION PRIDE MANE - Lv 70 [ RESISTANCE: 25 ] [ STRENGTH: 25 ] [ SPECIAL: HAIR ] [ LONE HUNTER'S PRIDE - Lv 20 ] [ BURNING PRIDE - Lv 30 ] [ ADMINISTRATOR'S NOTE - Lv 0 ] They say that red hair is a warning, and a promise. Those whose hair is living flame are the truest embodiment of that promise. Cannot be unequipped once worn.

Soulforged: Projector. Will become [ Racial Feature ]. Absorb time 9H LONE HUNTER'S PRIDE Summoning. Creates copies of you with your equipment and abilities, at a reduced level. BURNING PRIDE Acts as [ Fire Aura ] [ +10 ] Administrator's Note Facing death is not the same as courage, and experience is not the same as wisdom. For those who have courage, facing death is a natural thing. For those who have wisdom, gaining experience is a natural thing. You only know who you are when you are tested.

I studied the item carefully, but I was kind of disgruntled. The "Will become racial feature" line meant that I couldn't absorb the item to split it into its components without gaining a head full of living flame hair, which I frankly didn't want--disappointing, both because that flame power was the highest level fire aura I had so far, and also because that ability to summon a copy of myself sounded overpowered. And Enhancement Sage, while it did a lot, didn't replicate my class' ability to move Enhancements.

Actually, I pulled up the Skill Sage window for Enhancement Sage, and threw that in as a requested feature. It would cheapen my class if others could do it, but it was too useful not to...

[ DENIED ]

I frowned at the window, but didn't argue. In any case, while a more desperate person would gladly take a head of flaming hair in exchange for power, I wasn't eager to make that leap. It was a good item, but it wasn't me.

But also... I'd never heard anyone say that about redheads. What even was the implication, there, that they were barbarians? I found that offensive, as a person without red hair. As I moved to the floor exit, the thought struck me that red hair being "a promise" could be a very sexy idea, but... well, Louise and her golden hair were just right for me, and I don't think she would look right with some kind of Dungeon flame hair.

In any event, the battle had at least helped me get the trauma behind me for the moment, and that was a good thing, as I proceeded further through the Dungeon.