Theoria dropped her ears and whined.

“Don’t you want to hang out a little longer? I’m not allowed to leave the first floor while we have guests.”

Theoria was the first floor’s boss. If anything dangerous happened or if any explorers started acting up, it was her job to handle it.

Archimedes made sure that every one of his creations had a purpose. She, Deorsa, and Thesia were the first, second, and third floor boss monsters. The Mandrakes and senseless critters were mana farms. Zemnes was an architectural advisor and a roaming boss monster who guarded the dungeon core—at least until they had another floor for him to guard. Lilith was an advisor on puzzles and riddles, with a shaky position aside from that. And Minute and Helios were in charge of mechanical and magical device construction, respectively.

Everyone was expected to perform their roles well, and the boss monsters were on duty as long as there were explorers around.

Frankly, their dungeon was a hard nut to crack, but he was finally starting to open up. Theoria didn’t want to lose his trust right away.

“What’s wrong, Theoria?” Anther reached up and patted her head.

“It’s kind of frustrating that outsiders can’t understand us.” Theoria shook her head. “Archimedes, please?”

Frustrated silence echoed back at her.

“Please? Can you just tell him I’m on duty and can’t leave this floor? Archimedes?”

“Use your words, papa,” she heard Thesia say down on the third floor. “We can all feel that you’re upset. Tell us why. Maybe we can help.”

“I’m not a child,” the dungeon huffed, vexed by the slime’s gentle coaxing. He muttered, “… I’m jealous. At least he’s talking to you. I haven’t gotten so much as a hello.”

“Hello, daddy!”

“Aw, good boy, Helios~”

Theoria sensed the spider and the slime playing together on the third floor and wished she could join them.

“Anyway, papa, why don’t you say hi first? I’m sure Anther isn’t trying to ignore you: he just gets distracted easily. And you can translate for Theoria while you’re at it.”

“… Fine. It’s just a couple of signs, I suppose.”

Anther had continued petting Theoria while that silent conversation went on. He was worried because she wasn’t cheering up at all. Then, he saw a wooden sign appear in the corner of his vision.

“She’s on duty and can’t leave the first floor,” the sign said.

Anther blinked. He smiled and ruffled Theoria’s fur. “Did you want to play together more? How about I come back when you’re off duty and hang out with all the monster friends together?”

“The audacity,” Archimedes fumed.

Theoria whined, worried about the rising temperature she felt in the dungeon, but Anther misinterpreted the sound.

“What’s wrong? Do you have plans already? Or is waiting that hard?”

She shook her head and released a small, grumbling woof.

The elf scratched his head. “I don’t know what the problem is. Archimedes and I are friends, so I can come over to play, right?”

“Friends?” A sign forced itself in between the boy and the wolf, forcing both of them to step back. “Some friend. You’ve been ignoring me all morning.”

Anther read the sign and frowned. “Have not.”

“Yes, you have been,” the ink changed. “You didn’t greet me or talk to me at all, and now you’re assuming you can just come on in after dark when I’m busy renovating? To spend time with the monsters? Just them? See if I open my doors for you.”

The rant was so long that the body of the sign had to extend downward as it appeared. Anther’s green eyes moved back and forth and his brow furrowed.

“Are you mad at me?” he asked in a pitiful voice.

There was a quiet pause and then the sign shrank back to normal size. “No.”

“Really? You sound mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

The boy pursed his lips and explained. “I’m sorry I didn’t say hi. I was distracted, but it was rude. And we usually don’t talk that much when I’m exploring and solving puzzles, right? Because I’m not supposed to get any hints. But it’s not like I was ignoring you.” He tilted his head, “In the first place, isn’t everything inside something you made and part of you? I was paying really close attention when you think of it like that. And you’ve let me inside every other time I came by when you were closed, so I thought I had permission.”

Down on the third floor, Thesia chuckled. “See, he didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a misunderstanding. You should apologize for snapping at him.”

Instead, the sign asked in heavy, sarcastic quotes, “‘All the monster friends’?”

“Yeah?” Anther looked confused.

“Doesn’t that leave me out?”

“Is it even possible to come here and not spend time with you?”

A calm wind blew through the dungeon, clearing away the hot and stuffy air that had been brewing.

“Very well.” The sign stubbornly refused to display an apology.

Anther laughed and patted the sign post. “You know, you’re the one who usually doesn’t respond even if I say something. I didn’t know you could be this chatty.”

He looked around, but still Myla and Kasser were nowhere in sight. Apparently they hadn’t interpreted Theoria’s howl as a call to assemble.

“Since those guys are just messing around, how about I hang out with you two for a bit?”

Anther sat down on the grass and started chatting. “The puzzles were a lot easier this time than before, but they were fun. I liked them. Oh, and I was surprised. The pie slice I got tasted just like the ones mom makes.”

“Because it’s an exact copy of the pie slice you brought here,” Archimedes wrote. “Is the flavor adequate as a reward?”

“Of course,” the boy laughed. “My mom makes some of the best pies in the village. Do you want me to bring you more snacks and stuff to put in your chests?”

“Bring whatever you want.”

“Okay.” Anther bobbed his head and fished through his bag, removing a shiny silver-blue ingot. “By the way, what’s this?”

“It’s mithril. Is there a problem?”

“No. I thought that’s what it was, but I wasn’t sure. Some people outside were saying the door is made of mithril, but it looks a little different than this ingot. Less blue.”

“The doors are made of mithril-steel alloy.”

“I see.” The boy nodded, but frankly he had no idea what the significance of that might be.

Theoria whined and laid down on the ground, setting her head on the elf’s lap.

“I’m being ignored. You can talk to Archimedes anywhere in the dungeon.”

“He can talk to you anywhere in the dungeon too,” Archimedes pointed out.

“Aw, hey, are you lonely now too?” Being unable to hear their silent conversation, Anther came to his own conclusions and stroked the Black Wolf’s fur. “How about I tell you about…”

Anther suddenly stopped talking and moving, so Theoria lifted her head in concern.

“Anther? Hey, are you okay?” She licked his cheek but he didn’t react.

“This again,” Archimedes mused.

“Again? What is this? Why is he frozen?”

“I don’t know. Every time I try to examine it, it stops. Watch.”

Archimedes forced the mana clinging happily to the elf back under his control in order to clear the way for an examination, but, like magic, the boy resumed what he was doing a moment ago.

“…what we did during the Yadh festival a few weeks ago?” Anther blinked. And saw Theoria’s head in a different position from before, staring at him in concern. “Sorry, did I stall again? That happens sometimes.”

Theoria had things to say, but she knew the elf wouldn’t understand, so she just licked his cheek again instead.

“Haha, that tickles!”

The ink on the sign changed again. “I’m curious about that condition of yours. Go downstairs. I’ll take a closer look at it.”

The boy stood up and dusted off his robes. “Sure, I was planning on going down today anyway.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and faced the center of the room. “Kasser! Myla! It’s open!”

He turned to Theoria and gave her a final pet. “I’ll come back soon, okay?”

The first floor’s boss nodded and wandered back to her den, and soon, two more elf children emerged from the foliage.

“Ready to see the next floor?” Anther grinned.

***

At the bottom of the stairs to the second floor, three elf children peered out at the vast sunny fields. It was much less densely forested than the cavern above, but still very full of life.

“It’s so…” Myla wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, “… desolate.”

Kasser nodded his head, his ears pulled low in obvious discomfort.

The main difference between the floor above and this one was the mana density. Up above, the air was saturated with the stuff, but here there was none of it. The two elves felt like, with every breath, they somehow weren’t getting enough air.

“I guess it does feel strangely quiet down here,” Anther muttered carelessly, apparently unaffected by the unusual environment.

“I’m going back upstairs,” Kasser announced.

“Me too,” Myla nodded. “Let us know if you open the way to the next floor, but I can’t stand hanging around here.”

“Oh, uh, okay. Bye?” Anther waved as his friends suddenly left him. He scratched his cheek. “I was going to introduce them to you, but I guess that’ll have to wait until the third floor.”

He looked around, expecting a sign to pop up out of the dirt. But it was eerily quiet.

“Archimedes? Can you hear me?”

Finally, a wooden sign appeared.

“I was distracted.”

“That’s fine.” He smiled and took a seat on the grass in front of the sign, folding his legs and making himself comfortable. “So how’s this exam going to work? Do I have to take my clothes off? I’d rather not do that.”

“You can leave your clothes on. I finished already.”

“It’s done? That was fast. I thought I would feel tingling or something.” He reached down to pick at the grass but stopped himself, not wanting to be rude since the grass belonged to the dungeon too. Maybe it would hurt if he picked it? Probably not…

“So do you know what’s wrong with me?”

The ink on the sign didn’t change, so Anther waved his hand in front of it. “Hello~? Archimedes? Are you distracted again?”

He heard a rustling noise and looked behind him to find roots blocking the exit.

“Is something wrong?”

When he looked back at the sign, it said, “Please listen to everything I have to say.”

***

Wind stirred in the dungeon. Archimedes had the sensation of taking a deep breath. His walls felt cramped. It was unusual for him to be this anxious—especially when there was no battle happening.

“Do you want me to help?” Thesia asked, concern obviously leaking into her thoughts.

“You can’t talk for me yet,” he refused her.

“Can I help you?”

The dungeon wordlessly lowered the stone pillar blocking the hole in his barrier, allowing Thesia to find her way inside. She embraced his core in a gelatinous hug.

It was illogical, but he indeed felt more stable than he had a moment ago.

“Helios, go be ready to comfort him. Deorsa, block the exit. Text-based communication is not particularly efficient nor is it free of misunderstandings.”

Archimedes made a lot of decisions in his day-to-day life that affected a great number of beings, so in general, he tried to maintain the attitude that his decisions were correct. Admitting his fallible nature would begin to expose cracks and scars which had the potential to shake his foundations.

But he was in a position these days where recovery was possible, and so he could allow himself the occasional mistake.

Archimedes acknowledged that he was mistaken when he proclaimed that there were only two beings whose demise would shake him.

Clearly, there were many more than that.

“Please listen to everything I have to say.”

Over by the stairs, Anther nodded, a forced, serious look on his face. It was almost comical, but it wasn’t.

“Okay, I’m listening.”

“First, are you afraid of spiders? I’m sending a monster over to keep you company. He can’t talk, but he’s ‘cute’.”

“Spiders?” the elf tipped his head. “Spiders are fine. There’s a bunch of them at home. We can’t keep them inside because the webs would get everywhere, but they catch lots of bugs for us.”

“Good. His name is Helios.”

Anther drummed his hands on his knees while he waited, and soon he saw a large orange spider bobbing toward him with adorable steps. It was bigger than any non-monster spider, but still smaller than many ordinary animals. It stopped next to Anther and pointed at his lap with one leg.

The elf boy looked at the monster’s big eyes and fluffy cheeks and covered his mouth.

“So cute! Here, here!”

He patted his lap and Helios climbed into it, allowing himself to be pet and cuddled with. His fur was soft, and he made gentle purring noises and chirps.

“I wish I could take you home with me,” Anther whined, hugging the creature. Finally, he settled down and noticed that the ink on the sign had changed again.

“He can’t talk, but he is intelligent. Now, are you listening?”

Anther nodded seriously, still stroking the back of the fluffy spider. “I’m listening.”

“Relatively speaking, before much more time has passed… a few years, probably…” the previous ink had been cleared away in an instant, but the new letters were appearing slowly, reluctantly on the face of the sign. “If you hadn’t come to see me, you would have, in all likelihood… died.”

Anther’s hand stopped its petting motions, and he peered at the letters with a confused and somber frown.

“I’m… dying?”

“Let's start with explaining your chronic condition.”

Next to the sign, a model of a very strange structure was created by a colony of fireflies. They lit up in a very specific shape within the swarm.

“It’s low-fidelity, but this is a model of your brain, the organ that houses your thoughts and sense of self.”

“Okay?” the boy nodded along passively.

“The glowing pattern is a spell formation. It’s the shape you would want to make with mana before activating a certain divination spell.”

Anther replied numbly, “My mom is a diviner, and Ms. Cherise said I had a talent for divination when I registered as an explorer.”

The colony of insects changed, just slightly, as two of the bugs turned off their lights, while two others lit up. The ink on the sign changed as well.

“This is where several of the mana channels in your brain open up.”

“It looks similar,” the boy said. “Is that why I have a talent for it?”

Archimedes didn’t entertain the boy’s escapist question, keeping the discussion on track.

“This is why your body is essentially misfiring that certain divination spell every couple of seconds.”

Anther lowered his head. “Is that something that could kill me?”

“If enough mana went into the miscasting, it could put you into a coma you’d never wake up from. You’re alive because you’re too young for standardized magic lessons and never cast anything on purpose.”

“… What about the medicine I’ve been taking?”

The colony rearranged itself again. This time, it looked like a larger-than life model of the elf boy.

“The medicine you’ve been taking has narrowed your mana channels, reducing your risk of a fatal misfire. But…”

Several fireflies began to light up throughout the model, close to the skin.

“Byproducts of that medicine have also been clogging your mana channels. As an elf, a steady mana flow is necessary to maintain proper organ health.”

The fireflies lit up the outlines of several organs and the paths of the mana channels that led to them. Then, as the mana channels began to go dim, some of the organs flickered into darkness as well.

Anther felt a warm paw on his cheek and noticed he was crying. He quickly wiped the tears away on his sleeve and resumed stroking Helios.

“If… if I do die, I can come back, right? The guild can bring people back.”

“If you died of a chronic illness, you are not entitled to free resurrection. You can only pay an enormous fee for it in those cases.”

“That’s not fair…”

The tears started flowing again, and soon Helios’s fur was covered in little wet droplets. The elf boy hugged his monster pillow and sobbed.

“That’s… not fair… Why… do I… have to die? … I don’t wanna die…!” He sniffled in between every word, perhaps holding onto Helios a little too tightly, but the spider just did his best to be a comfort.

“Don’t cry, friend. My daddy can help you. It’s okay.”

The fluffy spider’s paw tapped Anther’s face again, while another leg pointed at the sign.

“I can cure you, but you’ll still have to die.”

Anther blinked. He had to clear some of the excessive tears from his eyes before he could read the sign properly.

The ink changed the moment Archimedes sensed he’d comprehended it.

“Or you can die naturally, but then I can only revive you as one of my monsters.”

“It’s okay, papa.” Thesia held the dungeon core gently. “It’ll be okay.”

Archimedes took a deep breath, wind rushed through the dungeon halls again, and he sent out a very important message.

“To cure you, I’ll have to slightly alter your brain structure. My data is limited. There might be side effects.”

Anther buried his face in Helios’s fur, shaking his head.

“I want to live. I trust you, Archimedes. Since we’re friends, and since you’re the first person who actually knew what’s wrong with me.”

Person… Archimedes shook—not literally, thankfully, but he was quite shaken. This was the first time anyone had ever used that word to refer to him.

I promise I’ll save you. Because we’re friends, aren’t we? Because I’m capable of saving you.

“Talk about it with your parents and the guild,” Archimedes wrote. “I’ll send the guild a detailed description of my diagnosis and treatment plan.”

If he tried to do this secretly, when the treatment necessitated Anther’s biological death, the boy’s parents might ban him from coming to the dungeon. Surely he could convince the medical professionals outside to allow the procedure: cold hard facts could be quite good at that.

Anther nodded. “… I don’t think I’m going to solve any more puzzles today. I just want to sit here for a while and then go back. Is that okay?”

In his lap, Helios turned his head up and nodded at him, and Anther buried his face in the creature’s soft fur again.

“… Thanks.”