"You can return around eight this evening," I tell the guide, who wasn't too sure about taking us to the island at the eastern tip of the crescent. "We'll be doing all of our CP runs today."

"Yes, sir," he says, though he looks like he wants to say something.

"If you're wondering if we can handle it," I tell him as Drake and Fang step out of the boat. "Fang's not actually an adventurer, he's still eighteen. Drake's a powerhouse, though, and can handle the monsters, while I deal with the traps. Drake and I have completed the Trial of the Crystal of Power."

"That's not it, sir," he says.

"You can ask or say it," I tell him. "We're not the type who just attack people over curiosity or sincere warnings."

"It's just that you so resemble another young man I see from time to time," he tells me. "Lord Calvin, the Water Guardian's eldest son."

"Oh!" I laugh. "I'm her youngest son, Nate, so that makes sense. Calvin, Taylor, and I bear strong resemblances. Unfortunately, I haven't learned how to teleport like my brother, or I would have come to visit more often."

"We on the islands have been wondering if you were Lord Nathan," he says. "Is it okay to ask if the rumors are true?"

"That I am to become the next Oracle?" I ask, and he nods. "Yes, they are, though my powers aren't as developed as my grandmother's. I don't actually possess the power to foretell the future like my grandmother, it takes a little more magical power than I currently possess. I was to learn that power soon, but something came up."

"Something?" He asks. "Sorry if I'm intruding, sir."

"No, it's fine," I smile. "I'm surprised it took this long for someone to finally ask me about it. We've been here for more than five days, I was expecting someone to ask after two or three. I'm sure you know that the elements are losing control. Sea storms in some areas, violent waters in other, water stilling in other, the wind raging or turning toxic, the air warming beyond the norm, the earth losing fertility."

"I've heard the stories," he nods. "And we've seen the effects here. The wind returned to normal recently, though. Rumors said the Elemental Crystals had lost their power because of the trials and the Crystals of Power."

"Not quite," I tell him. "The reason I left my training early was to investigate the situation. The Crystals went into a semi-dormant state, and they're returning to normal on their own. The Wind Crystal actually returned to normal while I was in the middle of appraising the situation. Nearly scared the life out of me. My guess is that this is a normal cycle for them, but the time period between them is so long that it's faded from history. Even though it seems they'll return on their own, I wish to continue my trip to study each one, to further deepen my understanding of the situation."

"Good luck," he tells me, then frowns slightly. "Doesn't reaching the chamber the Elemental Crystals are within mean completing their trial?"

"It does," I point at Drake. "He's strong enough to go through it on his own, so he handles the monsters, and I handle any traps we come across, as well as support to ensure he's healed up and doesn't get overwhelmed. We're visiting the Dungeons in the areas before visiting my mother and asking her to let us go through the trial so that I can appraise the Water Crystal so that we can get stronger to better ensure our chances of survival during the trial to reach it."

"Well, I wish you the best of luck," the guide says. "I'll be back around eight, as you requested."

"Thank you," I tell him, then he begins rowing away.

"You're not telling him the truth?" Fang asks.

"No," I answer. "That's the story I'm going with: I'm studying the situation, it's just a temporary thing they're doing that only lasts a few years, and they're returning on their own."

"Oh."

"Didn't we already tell you this?" Drake asks.

"Maybe?" Fang asks. "If you did, I forgot."

"Oh."

"It's fine," I say. "Anyway, let's stretch for a minute, Drake, then go into the Dungeon."

"Okay," Drake says.

We stretch as Fang strips off his clothes. No one comes out this way unless they're visiting the Tier II Dungeon, so there's not really much of a chance of someone other than us seeing Fang, though I know that probably wouldn't bother him. He'll wait for us for between Dungeon runs, and I'm sure he'll find something to entertain himself while Drake and are I in the Dungeon or while we're training.

As difficult as that might be.

The island itself isn't very large, and is entirely sand. No trees, no plants, nothing but sand and the Dungeon. That said, I'm actually sensing treasure here. Did someone lose something and it get buried in the sand, then forgotten about? Something to investigate after we run the Dungeon.

The access ring itself is interesting. The tops of each stone making up the outer ring of it has a line of water running down the center of their tops, with a line of sand running down the center of the water, though it doesn't reach quite the ends of the water. As a result, it looks like long, narrow islands. On the access stone, it's a ring of water with a small island of sand in the center.

According to my research, it's a Terrain Dungeon. Any Dungeon at Tier II or higher might be one. Normally, each floor of a Dungeon is the same as all previous floors and the rooms are generally the same size, at sixty feet on each side, giving the Dungeon a consistent form, and giving most Dungeons consistency in the size of their rooms.

There's also generally not much difference in the rooms, apart from minor changes based on the terrain. However, they generally fall into two types: platform and whole floor. In a whole floor room, the floor of the room stretches from wall to wall, corner to corner. In a platform room, there's a single platform in the center, with stones, smaller platforms, or short walkways leading from it into other rooms.

In a Terrain Dungeon, however, it's different. The Dungeon is set to a theme, like normal, but the type of theme is different. For starters, the first level of it won't have walls obscuring the view between rooms. Second, we can have other things in the room based on the current terrain. A beach might have trees or boulders, a forest might have random trees, plains might have boulders and bushes.

The different floors can be different terrains as well, though what was told to me on the islands while I was researching this Dungeon was that most of them, every floor past the first one is usually a series of linked caves.

It turns out, there's also a bonus for completing all five CP runs of a Terrain Dungeon, too. It's a CP reward that's the same for all Terrain Dungeons of that Tier, but can be completed as many times as there are Terrain Dungeons of that Tier.

I finish stretching, then step into the accessing ring for the Dungeon, Drake joining me. Fang is butt-naked and sitting in the sand, just watching us. He might also be performing some sort of meditation.

Rather than focusing on Fang, I read the name of the Dungeon on the menu in my vision.

Would you like to enter the Sacred Isles Sandy Island Dungeon? Yes No

So they weren't giving me the wrong name. Every time I asked what the Dungeon's name was, I just told "Sandy Island", even though that was also the descriptor given to this island as well. Jeez. Why couldn't someone have just said that?

I confirm I want to enter the Dungeon, then select Drake from the next menu, confirm, and we appear in another space. This one looks like an island as well, with ocean surrounding it as far as the eye can see. From what I heard while looking into this Dungeon, if we try to go past the border of the Dungeon, we'll just come up against an invisible barrier, most likely the edge of the dimension we're in.

The island itself doesn't take up the full span of the Dungeon. Rather, the edges are actually in the water themselves, with up to twenty feet of water from the shore. The Dungeon itself is segmented into a three-by-four grid to account for the ten Dungeon rooms, the entry room, and the exit room.

Each section can be entered only through the stone archways halfway down each edge that connects to another section, and there is an entry between every touching section. All we really need to do in order to move on to the next floor is go north three rooms, then west two, and we'll be in the exit room, but of course, that means skipping out on CP rooms.

As for how we know where the rooms end, with there being no walls, just a clear view across the island, there are ribbons of light from one entry to another, with it also extending from the entries to out to the edge of the actual Dungeon on those rooms bordering the edge.

We can't actually see if the sections have treasure or monsters, but once we enter the section, if we leave it, we'll be able to see it from then on.

"How are we doing this?" Drake asks, knowing I probably already have a strategy.

"Simple is efficient," I tell him. "We'll go north through the rooms until we're at the other end of the island, then we'll head west one room, then come back down south until we're at that room," I point at the section next to us. "Then go west again, then go north up to the exit. It's the shortest route and there won't be any backtracking. Everything on this floor of the Dungeon should be about as easy as the Dungeons we've done so far, it's the next floor that will have a difficulty increase."

"Okay," he says.

"Come on," I say. "Let's get this started."

"Okay."

We walk into the section to our north, and there are no monsters in here. There's also no chest, and I can't detect any traps, either. Glancing at my map, I notice that Map Icons put the icon for monsters on this section.

There are two possibilities. Either it's under the sand, in which case it's hard to detect because the sand will mask its movements since it shifts, or it's in the water.

"Drake," I say as the dragon looks around in confusion due to his awareness that his presence maximizes difficulties, and thus this room should have something and I didn't already warn him of a trap. "How confident are you in fighting in the water?"

"Not very, why?"

"I think the monster's in the water."

"Oh."

He turns and walks straight to the water, wading into it. He's only about ten feet into the water when he suddenly reaches down, grabs something with both hands, and twists, throwing it onto the beach. It's a large turtle, and it landed on its back, its head, tail, and legs retracted back into its shell.

Drake returns to shore and walks over to the turtle, then pounds it with both fists, using enough strength to punch through its underside and into it. A few seconds later, the turtle fades away, and he gives me a satisfied look.

"There."

"It's still marked as a monster room," I inform him after checking the map.

"I killed the monster."

Right, I haven't really told him about the icons before.

"The icon only disappears if all of the monsters in the room are killed," I tell him.

He turns and walks back into the water, wading around for a minute before reaching in and throwing another turtle onto the shore. After killing it, Drake gives me a satisfied look before looking between the three archways.

Then, he turns and looks at the beach for a moment, before looking between the northern and the southern archways. I'm impressed, he managed to use a landmark to figure out at least that much, but it's clear he's still uncertain. I let him struggle for a moment, then I walk forward, away from the southern archway and to the northern archway.

Drake follows me into the northern section, which has a giant, yellow crab waddling around. Not needing to look for the monster, he approaches it and kills it quickly, and we move on to the next room, another battle room.

I let Drake struggle for a minute with looking between the southern and western archways, then lead him into the western one as he starts to walk towards the southern. This room has two large crabs, and Drake kills them quickly, then we move on to the room to the south.

Without checking my map, I'm able to tell it's a trap room.

"Trap?" Drake asks, seeing no monsters and no chests, and since there's no shore in this section, he was able to rule that out easily.

"Yeah," I answer. "Give me a minute to sort out the path."

"Okay," Drake says, then waits as I appraise the ground.

There are rocks and shells on the ground, including a few larger rocks. Small boulders, really. There are boulders in several of the inner rooms, along with a couple of trees.

As this is the first floor of the Dungeon, it doesn't take me too long to figure out how to avoid tripping the traps. This one even has a deactivation method that's easy to figure out.

"Stay there," I tell Drake, then navigate my way through, avoiding stepping on any of the red shells or walking too close to the rounded smaller rocks.

There are two possible deactivation methods. One will actually deactivate the traps entirely, allowing us to cross the room without worrying about setting off the traps. The other will probably trigger a trap of some sort.

We've had a couple of Dungeon runs like this before, but they aren't common enough for me to fully appraise the two options. All of the Dungeon runs we've had where we came across a trap room with deactivation methods that wasn't tied into opening the chest in the room, they were always ones where it was extremely easy to trigger traps, even knowing where they were.

Basically, if it pretty much takes being light on your feet, observant of your surroundings and the details of it well, and careful in your movements – basically, anyone who fits well into the Rogue Classes – to get through the room without setting off any traps, there's some sort of deactivation method to the room.

With how easy it is to trigger the traps in here, and Drake's tail issues, I'm confident that if he were to cross this room with the traps active, he'd end up triggering half of the ones he went near.

Climbing onto one of the smaller boulders, I look around with me better vantage point, and determine that I'm right about there only being two possible triggers for the deactivation. Using my psychic senses, I attempt to determine which one is the right one.

Unfortunately, I can't figure it out, so I decide to pick between them at random. Deciding on the one closest to me, I make my way over to it. The deactivation method is a green shell, and I stomp on it, crushing it.

Immediately, I find myself in the room in the southwest corner of the Dungeon. I was teleported into the water in the corner of it, the water reaching up to my chest There's a giant crab on the sand in here, this crab with a reddish-orange shell. Since I'm in here, Drake can probably see the crab.

"Drake, stay there!" I call to him. "Wait for me to return. You'll trigger half the traps in there if you try to get through!"

"Okay!" He calls back.

I can tell by his face that he's amazed that he can hear me in the Dungeon, even though he was right there, listening, when the lady was telling us about Terrain Dungeons.

The crab and I watch each other as we both move. The crab moves to block my path, while I move to avoid it. Unlike Drake, I can't just punch this thing and kill it. In fact, it would be very difficult for me to kill it.

Fortunately, I manage to make it a few steps onto dry sand, then I brace myself and wait for the crab to reach me. Once it's close enough, I bend my knees just a little bit more while making sure to keep my feet flat, and as I snaps forward with one of its pincers, I leap into the air as high as I can while also propelling myself forward. Reaching out, I feel the crab's shell with my hands and push, lifting myself up higher and continuing forward.

I land on the crab's shell, then jump again almost immediately, sending the crab down to the sand as I launch myself at the eastern entry. There's a large turtle in here, but it's easy to get past, and once I'm back in the entry room, I just head north two rooms, then west into the room with the traps that I left Drake in.

"That was awesome," Drake tells me.

"Don't try jumping in the sand like that in a fight," I tell him. "Without practicing jumping in the sand. Otherwise, you're liable to either not go very far or just fall on your face."

Daniel made me practice that many, many times, specifically for when I'm in a beach-themed Dungeon by myself and can't fight the monsters. I fell on my face or onto the large rocks he had me using as the 'monster' way too many times, and just thinking about it causes me to remember the pain and agony. Including the times I broke bones.

"Oh."

"Wait here," I tell him. "I'll get the right deactivation this time."