Wake up.

Wake up, Sora!

Wake up, Radish Head!

Sorath was wondering why a swamp dragonfly was talking when an invisible pinch stung his cheek. He startled awake and squeezed his blankets tighter… except he wasn’t squeezing blankets. He was in an intimate embrace with Gwyn, her passion fruit fragrance mellow and mouth-watering. Delicious. Some juicy fruit would be nice right now. His stomach gurgled.

Good morning, she thought.

Same to you. He promptly realized she couldn’t hear that. “Same to you. And why did you sneak into my bedroll?”

“To keep you invisible. Why else?”

He remembered her Perfect Stealth ability required physical contact. “Oh. Right.” The jelly in his skull had assumed something else, but he wasn’t exactly what. He exhaled. “Did your security enchantments detect anyone?”

“No, we’re safe.”

“Good to hear.” He unzipped the bedroll, then reached into his pouch and retrieved his gloves. “What’s the time?” he asked as yesterday’s adventures sprang to the forefront of his mind, from Freya’s droning lecturing to Gwyn’s cooking to the miniboss fight. It had all happened. No dream.

Gwyn sprang up to her feet. “I usually sleep eight hours and a bit, so it’s been about five hours. It should be very early morning.”

He wryly said, “This is going to take some getting used to.”

Freya’s voice cut in from a dozen strides to the left among piles of sand: “Yes, I was just pondering that. Once your aura is Master 10, time will run eighty-three percent faster for us. Quite an awkward number. An even hundred would be much more manageable.”

“Well…” He shrugged. “Maybe the mastery bonuses will make up for the last seventeen.”

“Hopefully,” Freya said, chewing on something. Her head rose above a sand pile as she stood. She chucked him a paper-wrapped oblong the length of three middle fingers. “Breakfast bar. Eat up.”

The wrapper was tougher than it looked, enchanted, saturated in protective mana. He bit into fresh chocolate, nuts, and dried fruit, all densely packed into a chewy, sticky block of sweetness. He chomped down six mouthfuls, then stifled a burp. Very tasty. Certainly better than fermented cabbages, much more filling too. He could feel his stomach expand.

“Ready for the next floor?” Gywn asked.

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Great!” she chirped and tugged him as though he were a horse on a leash. His manalamp dangled from her other hand, igniting with a leaf-green flame. “Sense any traps or anything weird?”

He took in every little detail of the cast iron double-doors: no rust, no handles, no keyhole. Bolts per plain circular. A small blackish-blue gem at the center of each door gave off mana that mostly lacked texture or emotion. He focused on the edges, but nothing leaked through the mana-tight seal. This was most likely a gateway to a sub-dimension; this whole dungeon was in its own dimension, only accessible through the one entrance.

“Nothing,” he said and stepped back. “Open it. Freya, you lead.”

“Yes, my lord,” Freya sarcastically said and held out her palms. Gold and white mana streamed into the gems, and vibrations rippled through the ground as the seal broke. Swinging inward, the cast iron groaned as though in protest to keep whatever treasures out of their hands.

Stone steps descended into thickening darkness. The masonry was masterful with immaculate square edges and flat surfaces. A pungent, musky stench wafted out. Sorath nearly missed a wet, slithering noise and an accompanying mana signature, a mana that felt hollow and unlike any living being he had encountered. Was it even alive? The thing was like a fresh corpse holding on to remnants of living mana.

Gwyn nudged his wrist, whispering, “what is it?”

“Might be Undead.”

“Oh, is that all? My nature magic is super effective against Undead.” She spoke as though she had slain thousands of walking corpses. She probably had.

“Yeah, I know. I’ve just never…” He took a deep breath and regretted doing so, coughing once. “My whole life I’ve been safe behind faction lines. When I was a little boy, I thought stuff like Undead was just scary stories. It’s a different world out here.”

Her fingers gripped his. “Don’t worry, we have you covered.”

“I’m not afraid,” he chuckled. “Just… surprised.” But surprised wasn’t the right word.

Freya, hood down, glanced over her shoulder. “You’re thinking of your mother, aren’t you?”

He didn’t frown. Muscles in his gut tensed. “I’m not, but thanks for reminding me.” He sighed. “Let’s just get this over with. You two ready?”

Gwyn nodded. “Ready.”

“Alright,” Freya said, drawing her sword, materializing her leaf shield. “Same as yesterday. Look out for traps and this will be easy.”

At the bottom of the stairs, they came across a congealed purple fluid slathered on the wall. Not blood. It reeked of the same pungent stench and had traces of the same hollow mana. Freya scraped a small amount with the tip of her sword. To Sorath’s disgust, she tasted it, then spat on the floor.

She grumbled, “Eldritch Abominations. How unlucky.”

Gwyn abjectly said, “Are you sure?” Mild anxiety bubbled in her mana.

“There’s no doubt. We can turn back if you want.” Freya was not nearly as bothered.

“No, no. With Sora, we should be fine.”

Sorath was pretending to follow along, keeping up a confident facade. After all, confidence was half the struggle in dungeons. But arrogance was an inevitable killer.

He was about to ask as Freya said, “Sorath, by the look on the face, I assume you know almost nothing about Eldritch. They’re monstrosities said to have originated from the stars. Their type of magic is unique in that it doesn’t have weaknesses but at the same time isn’t particularly effective against anything. Their greatest strength is their regeneration second only to their permanent stealth.”

“Stealth even in combat?” he asked.

“Even then, yes, but you are the perfect counter to invisibility, aren’t you? So, we shouldn’t have any problems.” She turned on her heel, marched onward.

The stench worsened when they neared the corridor’s end, and inside the square room was the thing that slithered. Every surface was smeared with purple slime. Urns were smashed. Tables were overturned. The hollow mana was overpowering, Sorath barely able to track it under a table where it hid. Afraid?

He pointed with his blade. “There.”

“Entragria,” Gwyn invoked. Greenish-brown vines of solid mana shot out of her wand’s tip, snaring the thing in a tangle of thorns. Its pained squeals were that of a dying boar. A series of jade bolts silenced it.

Shimmering into clarity, a giant slug lied dead on the floor. Rows of serrated teeth gleamed in the manalamp’s glow. Slimy purple scales protected an otherwise squishy, bloated, grotesque body that surely was not of this world. But circular growths on its underside were similar to those on an octopus’s arm, and unlike regular corpses, its mana didn’t fade away.

Its wounds were healing. Rapidly.

Sorath’s right arm moved in pure instinct. “Psycha-Cres.” Electric plasma burned through fatty innards, and the Eldritch Slug squealed one final time. Its severed corpse blackened and disintegrated into dust. He exhaled, relief cooling his lungs. “Are they all this disgusting?”

Gwyn hummed in affirmation.

Freya muttered, “That was only a baby. We got lucky.”

“Some luck,” Gwyn said, stepping around a broken chair.

Sorath noticed a spot of intricately woven mana under a tile. “Wait!”

Too late. The stone slab depressed under her weight. A line of mana shot into each wall. The doors closed with echoing bangs as rows and rows of spikes sprang out of the left and right-side walls. And at the center of the room, one tile was lifted atop a chest-high pillar. On the tile was a grid of glowing pale-blue mana, eight by eight.

Faster than he could react, the pillar shot a bolt through his chest. He gasped. There was no pain. No blood. No wound.

“You’ve been chosen,” Freya said.

He frowned at her. “For what?”

“Look at the glowing squares. You should be able to see a piece of a picture in each square except one. It’s a sliding puzzle.” She scratched her nose. “They didn’t mention this in school?”

“No. We only had a few classes on dungeoneering.”

“Sounds like a terrible school,” Gwyn said.

Freya nodded. “Yes, dungeoneering is a vital skill everyone should learn. Anyway, it looks like this is a puzzle floor. Every room will have a puzzle, some of which are traps like this, some of which are optional. Some rooms will have one or two weak guards like that Slug. And don’t bother trying to get through the walls; they’re nigh invulnerable.”

He asked, “And the boss room?”

“Standard miniboss. Three-phase.”

He carefully walked to the pillar. True to Freya’s word, sixty-three out of sixty-four squares of the grid had a piece of a picture. Dot and line art. The top-left square was blank. He couldn’t decipher what the picture was. He gulped.

“Here.” Gwyn offered a pencil and a notebook. “Trace it.”

“I can do that?”

She smiled. “Of course you can. Why would you think otherwise?”

“I don’t know. It feels kind of cheaty.”

“It does,” Freya said, “but doing so significantly slows us down. There may be dozens of rooms we have to get through.”

“I see.” He tore a blank page, laid it on the grid, and began tracing as quickly as possible. Fifteen minutes of work resulted in six pages that were cut into squares. Next to the manalamp, he arranged a matching puzzle on the ground, double-checking after each piece.

“Ice Dragon,” Freya said with total certainty.

Gwyn knelt. “Yep, it can’t be anything else.”

Their superior Wisdom, perhaps Intelligence too, was humbling, because he still couldn’t see a final picture. He had to remind himself that they were many decades, if not hundreds of years, old. Their eternal youthfulness was both beautiful and off-putting.

Gwyn’s hands clapped together. “Follow my slides. The key is to do it row by row starting at the top. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

She shifted the first square, and he copied her move on the mana grid with a mere thought. As he had expected, the two walls with spikes also shifted inward by a fraction of a nail-length. He didn’t bother calculating how many moves could be made before their painfully gruesome deaths, instead following Gwyn’s lead in blind trust.

He did trust her.

She also trusted him, though to a lesser extent.

And he had failed her by not sensing this trap. What if it had been a mana bomb? Or darts? Or poison gas? That could’ve been the end of her immortal life, and it would’ve been his fault. The thought pained him more than he wanted to admit, but he knew he had to do better for at least his own safety.

A picture of a dragon in flight spewing frost soon emerged through the jumble of lines. The body was slender and long, and the wings were wide and took up almost half the squares. The head was much more detailed and exaggerated in size: elongated, triangular, horned, and whiskered. Although dragons were extinct, Sorath wouldn’t be surprised if this was a decent picture of one.

One last move put ice debris into the correct place. Solid white light blotted out the puzzle as the side walls shifted back out, mana dissipating. The doors opened.

No loot.

Gwyn cheered, “Easy as strawberry pie! Nice work, Sora!” She slapped his back with a tad too much force.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.

“About time,” Freya said, stretching her limbs. “Onward we go. Be more careful from now on, Sorath.”

“Goes without saying.” He picked up Vetara’s Reckoning and followed.

The next room was without Eldritch guards. A barrel by the door was full of water, and on a stone table, six empty cups of differing sizes waited. A number marked each cup—volumes. The exit door was closed, sealed tight, with two oversized vases attached to the wall, also marked with volumes.

Sorath had seen this puzzle before in maths class at school. “We use the cups measure out exact water volumes to put into the big vases stuck by the door. Is this all?”

“Exactly,” Gwyn said, “but if you pour in too much into either big vase, it’s dungeon-over for us.”

“Over being?”

“We’ll have a set time to leave before the dungeon entrance disappears.” Her mana churned in slight worry.

Dread pulled his mana to his feet. “We’ll be stuck in here forever?”

“Yes,” Freya said unemotionally. Her mana was frozen solid.

Gwyn whistled a long note. “So, please, let the person with the highest Intelligence attribute do this. Also known as Gwyn.” She swiped the second smallest cup and filled it with water up to an inner groove.

Sorath watched Gwyn pour water back and forth from one cup into another. She must’ve poured fifty times before she was satisfied with the first vase and began working on the second, which ended up taking over two hundred pours between cups. The complexity of the problem, combined with her swiftness, was beyond his comprehension.

How many points in Intelligence does she have? Two hundred at least. It must be her equipment bonuses. All legendary. Jealousy made him bite his cheeks.

As Gwyn emptied the smallest cup into the second vase for the countless time, both vases lit up and the door swung open. She sang, “Puzzle solved!”

“Good job,” Freya said, “I was worried for a moment there when you spilled a cup.”

Gwyn giggled in unease. “My mistake, but it was mostly Sora’s fault for staring with eyes bigger than full moons. It’s like he’s never seen someone do this before.”

“I haven’t,” he said. “How much Int do you have?”

Eyes closed, she crossed her arms and said smugly, “Why do you want to know? Are you already plotting against me?”

He was about to deny it, but an urge to joke won over his tongue: “Well, both of you will eventually go into my youth potions.” His jaw clenched in instant regret.

Fortunately, they had good sense of humor; Freya smirked devilishly at him while Gwyn laughed and joked, “Who will be first? Me or her? I bet it’ll be her, won’t it?” Her tone dripped with suggestion. She definitely knew he was crushing on her, and he would bet that she had foreseen his attraction to her. This was all her plan. What a manipulative Elf girl.

His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Maybe it’ll be you, Gwyn.”

“Hmph. After all the hugs I’ve given.” Her mouth made a popping sound. “Freya, next room, please.”

“Sure, and I’ll keep an eye on him for you from now on.” Freya hit him with a playfully mean look, then marched through the exit door.

Down another flight of immaculate steps, the corridor split into two. To the left, a room was empty and had an open exit door. But the right-hand room was full of everyday objects and two Eldritch Slugs without an exit door. A dead end. The stench was nigh vomit-inducing.

Sorath invoked, “Telenka.” He seized both in crushing grips, bringing them together. “Psycha-Cres.” He swung at one-fifth power. Both squealed no more before turning to dust. His plasma crescent splashed against an urn when it should’ve smashed it.

The objects were invulnerable.

“Look in the mirror,” Freya instructed. “The reflection shouldn’t match the room. The person who adjusts the room will be awarded a loot gem.” Her gaze shifted from object to object, checking each with the mirror. “There. The dinner plate and bowl.”

Gwyn said, “Sora, check for traps and do it. You need the loot more than us.”

“Sure.” He examined the dinner plate and found it tethered to the mirror with a faint mana chain. Every object was, including the tables and chairs. Each individual candle had their tethers. Other than that, not a smudge of mana stood out apart from the purple slime left behind by the Slugs. He triple checked, then telekinetically lifted the dinner plate and bowl with utmost care. He placed them atop the drawers.

The mirror lit up, flashing thrice, shrinking and morphing into an onyx tetrahedron not larger than a baby’s fist. He guided the loot gem to his palm, fed it ample mana, praying to the gods for another piece of Vetara’s set. With a dim glow, the one gem split into eight. The eight blobs flattened and rounded.

Coins.

Gold coins.

“Damn it,” he hissed and pouched the gold.

Feeling sympathetic, Gwyn rubbed his back. “Can’t have extraordinary lucky every time. You’ve gotten two skill gems in two days.”

“Yeah, I know. Let’s get on with the dungeon.” He kissed her cheek and walked ahead to the other room. There were a handful of mana spots in the floor, all likely traps. On the ceiling too.

This tedious floor was going to take all day.