The hostel party advanced further into Floor 2, still in the cave where they had encountered the howl apes.

Hummer wafted her nose and said, “Damn, that smell is going to stick with me for a while.”

“You’ve never smelled charred ape?” Aeo asked. “Consider yourself very lucky.”

“When have YOU smelled it?” Phelia asked, calling the sun elf out on her indirect boast.

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s just keep heading to the lake.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Mino had once again entered tour guide mode as she advanced ahead of everyone else. “Funny thing about the caves on this floor,” she began. “Most of them don’t seem like Dungeon Core creations. The core tended to like consistent patterns, like circles and mazes and symmetry. Whenever people messed it up, it usually fixed it back later.

“In the centuries before the Great Hero came and destroyed it, though, something changed in the upper floors. In the past, all eight floors transformed dramatically, sometimes overnight, but in the first three or four floors, the layout has been the same for a long time. A few pathways changed, some damage repaired, new traps created, some tunnels to help mels navigate, but that’s about it. Old documents talk about the Dungeon Core changing Floor 1’s entire labyrinth design in just a week, ruining all their maps and destroying the equipment they left behind. But a couple hundred years ago, all of that power went away.”

“It got weaker,” Amelia posited.

“It seems that way, but nobody knows why,” Mino said. “It means the Great Hero might not have even been able to destroy it at its full strength. That sounds a bit disappointing for the sagas, but it’s very fortunate for the rest of us.” She laughed at her own joke. “Anyway, the interesting thing is that most of the tunnels and caves weren’t made by the Dungeon Core, but probably by the animals themselves. Obviously, glossals too, but you can always tell those apart.”

“Even this one here was created by beasts?” Phelia asked. “This one is huge!”

“Give a howl ape a hundred years, and it can do a lot,” she said.

“I’d rather not give them that long. That’s kind of scary.”

“Not just howl apes, though. There’s a lot of beasts down here in the dungeon who might have made this cave,” Mino said. “Some live hundreds or thousands of years. No telling what behemoths are lurking down every corner.”

Phelia shuddered, suddenly losing her adventurous spirit.

Aeo, on the other hand, seemed newly invigorated. “If I could just meet a legendary beast, I think that’d make my whole damn life.”

“You’ve met Otto,” Mino said. “He’s an olm.”

“A BABY olm,” Aeo corrected. “I want to see a huge adult one that’s four hundred years old and tries to eat us in one big swoop. Then fight it.”

“I think wild olms only eat mana.”

“Whatever.”

Amelia herself wondered what kind of legendary beasts laid lurking in the dungeons, especially all these years after the Dungeon Core was destroyed. The kind of battles it would take to fight some of those monsters... As innocent as they may have been, any creature powerful enough to create a cave this big surely had the soul energy of a hundred glossal beings. If she ever returned to this place after finding Ed again, she would consider going monster hunting, for sure.

More than anything else she had heard about the dungeon thus far, the fact that animals had burrowed entire pathways through the cave, impressed Amelia more than anything else so far. She was sure other natural factors were at work, such as erosion or mere gravity, but the sheer tenacity of it all was the most important part, she thought. Animals, with the force of will alone, had created structures to help themselves and their future progeny.

She really did feel guilty every time she had to take an innocent life. And even the most rabid, dangerous animals were still innocent. Those howl apes she incinerated were hungry, probably starving, and they could smell the food in her companions’ packs. They wanted nothing more than to survive another day, even if that turned out to be impossible. No anger or malice should ever be given towards innocent beasts, she thought, from as small as hornets to as large as the legendary beasts Mino spoke of.

But what was done was done, and she knew that she would not hesitate to destroy any innocent beast that stood in her way or that threatened her companions.

Finally, the group emerged from the cave, and the dim light from before burst into full radiance.

Mino, too, beamed. “Here it is: The Manadhmeth Lake.”

The waters were a bright sky blue and lit up the massive clearing in the middle of the dungeon. Countless other caves all around the second floor led to this central opening: A huge, shallow lake that gave fertile illumination to everything around it. The party flicked off their battery lamps and attached them to their bags. It was bright enough here already.

Amelia just stood there and looked at it all.

“Wow.”

Grass, or maybe moss, sprouting up from the ground in patches. White, bony fish fluttering about in the blue. A gentle humming sound from the lake. The smell of fresh, wet mana.

A few other tour groups were here too, but they were on the other side of the lake. They were mostly humans, with a few stray golems around too that were not directly attached to any tour groups. Just like at the outpost, there were more golems than usual, and it felt like something might have been going on. If it was related to the drug ring, she would find out soon enough.

The other groups paid Amelia’s group no mind, and hers paid theirs no mind in return. The lake was so large that their group genuinely had this spot to themselves. Other than, of course, the large, lumbering beasts that walked slowly around, nibbling on the ground or bathing in the lake near the shore.

They were huge herd animals, a little bigger than an ox. Dark green. Covered with fungus and plants across their backs. They looked like they should already be dead, with that level of infection, but they rambled around with healthy demeanors.

Mino, of course, noticed Amelia’s fascination with the creatures and stepped right to her side. “Vendor beasts,” she told her. “They’re very friendly. Ain’t nothing around that can kill one, anyway. Well, except legendary beasts, I guess. And poachers.” She spat at that last word. “Vendor beasts live in Floor 4, mostly. But they use hidden tunnels to come up here and bathe.”

“Tunnels...”

Amelia made a concerted effort not to gasp in excitement upon hearing that. The fact that there were more ways to sneak between the floors made things a lot easier. She knew that Fourland’s drug operations used their own tunnels to avoid going through the main entrances, but if even the animals had their own, that meant she did not have to search intensely just to find one.

Some distance away, Hummer’s head perked up. She took a quick glance in Amelia and Mino’s direction, apparently snooping on their conversation. The mention of tunnels grabbed her attention just as much as it did Amelia’s.

She realized Hummer had something to say to her, but it had to wait until Mino was away.

“Are they really safe?” Amelia asked, referring to the vendor beasts.

“Oh yeah, sure. You can even pick mushrooms off them to eat. Other animals love them.” Mino walked over to one and patted it on the head. “Isn’t that right, you big dumb animal?”

It did not respond, barely registering Mino’s existence. Amelia wondered how well their senses even worked after so long down here.

“Let’s go pick some mushrooms, everyone,” Mino said.

“Hell yeah,” Aeo said.

“Yipee!” Phelia shouted.

The two of them ran with glee over to a nearby vendor beast and began collecting what Amelia assumed was going to be part of their dinner tonight. Glossal beings were strange; they knew with such certainty what substances were safe and what were bad or poison from cultural knowledge alone. There was a multi-generational implication that some ancient beings tried all of these things, and many of them died in the process, but their knowledge was passed down for thousands of years, all leading up to these three women sifting over an animal’s back to find the fungus that was actually safe to pick.

Now Hummer and Amelia had enough space to talk, both of them staying back while the others had fun. Amelia did not look at her companion, but listened to her words as she said in a low voice, “You need it. I need it.”

“You want to go deeper,” Amelia said.

“Mhm.” There was a short hesitation, a cracking in her voice. “This is my last chance to see this dungeon, my last chance to experience the real world. I’ve got to go down further than just Floor 3. And I can tell you want to do the same thing.”

Amelia kept herself from sighing audibly. “I can’t have someone slowing me down.”

“I won’t. Just take me with you, and I’ll help you out. Soon as we get to Floor 3, we should ditch them, find a secret tunnel, and get down there.”

“No.”

Now Amelia took a look at Hummer, just to see her reaction to her flat denial. She looked not the least bit deterred.

“We’ll see,” Hummer said.

She seemed desperate. The same flavor of desperation that Amelia held within her own heart. And she had a feeling that her “no” meant less than nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Mino and the others soon finished picking mushrooms off the vendor beasts and said their cute thank yous to the giant animals. Just like that, it was time to get a move on again.

“Next thing,” Mino said, “is the Shrine of the Patient Monk.”

They walked the circumference of the lake for some time, taking in the sights of the glowing lake and its many peaceful denizens. Mino explained about the shrine, a tiny wooden structure built by some lonely ancient monk in an era when monsters and melanoids still ruled supreme, and that the monk lived down here and did all sorts of research to help the people of the future, much like those self-sacrificing fungus eaters of eons past.

But Amelia found herself unable to fully pay attention to Mino’s words. Her mind was fully focused on what would happen once they reached Floor 3 and an opportunity arose. With the knowing smile of Hummer behind her, she wondered how this was about to go down.