Inke contemplated, in all seriousness, inflicting serious property damage on the inn to force her way out. While she couldn’t point to an exact cause, Inke had ended the link with Ignari far earlier than she had intended to, and the seals around the door and window would remain for several more minutes. It was well within her power to simply take Ignari without even activating the sword and cut through the wall with the supernaturally sharp blade, but that would draw both more attention and cost more than Inke needed.

She’d already spent five pacing the length of the room and twenty before that meticulously organizing everything that Inke had brought with her, which was actually a decent amount of stuff. Sighing, Inke rubbed at her face, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes.

Typically, she was more than decent at waiting patiently. However, Inke still felt off-balance after the events of that afternoon, and all she wanted to do was reach the dungeon and get some real answers. She trusted Guildmaster Shatter not to send her on a deadly task, but it was becoming plain that Inke didn’t have all of the relevant information about the so-called ‘Dungeon-y Dungeon of Dungeons (Without Dragons)’ that she needed.

The border of the window flared gold as she stared at it, slowly dissipating into small flakes that drifted through the air. If that seal had run its course, the one on the door certainly had as well, but using the window was probably a better idea, anyway.

Despite a not inconsiderable amount of time spent pondering, Inke remained unaware of what factions could be moving behind the scenes. More than a few organizations jockeyed for power in the Empire. Signs pointed to Harin being correct, that someone was trying to quietly dispose of him, and any or multiple of them could be behind the attempt.

Inke felt she had sufficiently covered her tracks, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that someone had noticed her partying with Harin and set someone to watch her. Rather, she considered it more unlikely if no one was covertly observing her.

Carefully, she pushed the window open. With a wince at the loud creak, Inke stuck her head out, feeling a cool breeze pass by. Glancing around, she internally debated whether or not to use Ignari. While the enhancements granted by her sword combined with the Skills could guarantee Inke’s avoidance of any watchers, the tradeoff lay in the fact that Ignari was running low on Soul Shards.

It would be fine if she didn’t use Ignari.

Probably.

Without paying any additional thought to the matter, Inke slipped out the window, dropping from the second floor and landing on the dirt below with grace. Behind her, the window swung open, but Inke had left nothing of value within the room. She could close it when she returned.

Life for adventurers didn’t stop because of something as measly as nighttime, but it certainly slowed down. As Inke weaved in and out of side roads, hood pulled up, she only passed by a few lone pedestrians, and none of the commercial buildings were open.

However, the dungeon was much busier than anywhere she had been. The limits on entrances each week and the general difficulty of obtaining a slot meant that plenty of lower-leveled adventurers shifted their schedules to attempt entering around midnight and the early morning. Higher-ranked adventurers could generally be assured of getting in if they at least waited for a full day, but with the stiff competition and limited availability, anyone lower was forced to turn to methods such as becoming nocturnal.

A low buzz of conversation surrounded the dungeon. As a lone adventurer, Inke stood out against the weak parties who congregated in groups of five or more in the hopes of managing to clear a few rooms.

Sure, a quarter of them might die, but that was how the dungeon worked. Adventurers entered and paid a toll of experience for the time they stayed, and in return, the dungeon monsters returned Experience and loot. Living adventurers came out on the better side of that equation, but plenty of them also died, surrendering their total accumulated Experience to the dungeon. Everybody benefited.

Besides the ones who died, but no one cared about them.

Some part of Inke, the rational piece, told her that she should probably feel more empathy for those adventurers than she did, that it was a flawed system. Sympathy for people who just hadn’t had the same luck as her.

Or nepotism.

A different part of her, the hypocritical piece, told each of them had made their own choices, and she had zero responsibility to help them.

A party of nine got the go-ahead to enter the dungeon, descending into its depths.

Inke didn’t move.

Getting into the dungeon would be difficult. Without Ignari or specialized Crystal, Inke’s grand total of useful Skills amounted to what Soar gave her, which wasn’t much. She didn’t have any fake identification, either. That was something that would have actually been more useful than her real identification. Technically speaking, Inke could lie as much as she wanted about her identity, but the bracer itself couldn’t be faked by most people.

And Inke didn’t need information about some Platinum VI adventurer in the middle of nowhere getting out and making her life exponentially more difficult.

…Or she could steal someone else’s.

Inke sat back, crouching, staring at the body she had hidden behind a stack of crates. It would be so easy to kill the person, unconscious and lying prone, and it would probably solve quite a few of her problems, if not all of them because of the likely low level.

She shook her head, dispelling those thoughts. Murder would attract too much attention, and Inke…

…Well, she was, in fact, about to attract quite a bit of attention, but with a goal of making people not suspect her, not in the way that a body would. And especially not in the particular brand of mutilation that Inke would have to inflict to make any real gains off a kill.

A Copper II band was hung loosely on the left arm, sitting atop the sleeve of a light tan undershirt. Attempting to tug it off, Inke momentarily wrestled with the latch. In such an active business as an adventurer’s, they had to be designed not to come off under serious physical activity or duress.

Finally, it popped off with a quiet clicking sound, and Inke breathed a sigh of relief. There were always the weirdos who kept their armbands on quite literally every second of their lives and had the latch welded shut or some-such because they were terrified of losing them or someone stealing the armband.

Inke had always considered them to be paranoid, at least, but considering what she was currently doing, maybe there was something to the idea.

Her own armbands were also on her left arm, hidden underneath the loose shirt sleeve, so she slid the Copper band up her right arm and closed it.

As casually as possible, she headed back over to the dungeon entrance and walked up to the same pink-skinned rirwon as several hours previously. He looked up at her approach but didn’t list off the same spiel as Seola.

She was grateful for the cloak and its hood, which were enchanted not to fall off unless she purposefully removed them. Furthermore, although it didn’t hide her identity or voice, it cast an unnatural shadow over her face, obscuring Inke’s facial features.

That still left the matter of her voice, so Inke cleared her throat, preparing to pitch her voice up several octaves. While it would be obvious that she was faking it, Inke was planning to kill this identity off, so it shouldn’t matter. The cloak was specifically designed to appear as ordinary and common as possible, and her identification was stolen. Hopefully, the Rirwon wouldn’t think to connect it with Inke’s true identity.

Slipping her right arm out of the cloak, she pushed her sleeve up, revealing the Copper armband. “Rit, Copper II,” she said, using her typical alias.

The rirwon nodded. “And party, I assume,” he said.

She hesitated, but it was much less obvious than to have a single adventurer alone, so she didn’t correct the assumption. With a nod to the rirwon, Inke wandered off, staying as close to the dungeon as possible without attracting suspicion-

Or, rather, while attracting quite a bit of suspicion, but not so much that anyone intervened to ask her about it.

Before she saw them, Inke heard it as a party exited the dungeon. Without waiting another moment, she whispered, “Activate Bond: Soar.” A screen began to coalesce, but she waved it away. “Gust.”

Sprinting forward, Inke took a moment to savor the shocked forces of the party ascending the steps as she dashed past them and headed into the dungeon. There were shouts and calls behind her, but Inke added, “Wall of Wind.”

Behind her, what must have appeared to onlookers as empty air solidified, but the sound of clanging metal told her that at least one person had been stopped by it. The wall wouldn’t hold long, as its Health and size were proportional to the Mana she pumped into it, which hadn’t been much.

After all, Inke had to conserve some for the dungeon.

It was, however, enough to reach the entrance to the instanced portion of the dungeon.

A screen flashed across her vision.

Warning

Wall of Wind reached 0 HP and was destroyed by [???], [???], [13 hidden], and [???].

Inke grimaced. Trying to enter a dungeon without waiting properly was something tended to make every single adventurer in the area angry, as no one wanted to see someone else get an opportunity they might have been waiting hours for- and unfairly, at that.

The typical result of trying such a thing was a disaster, but Inke had come to realize that most people’s main reason for failure was the fact that they did it incorrectly.

For one, it was something that only worked in instanced dungeons. In others, a mob of quite literally every adventurer possible would follow the cheating party into the dungeon. It was even worse in those because wait times were longer, even if a larger dungeon might have more floors.

In an instanced dungeon, however, the dungeon would shut the instance after a set amount of time, usually anywhere from five to ten seconds, had passed. All Inke had to do was create a new instance by entering and hope her Wall of Wind held long enough for the instance to close.

For a second time that day, flaming chickens leaped at Inke. She cut them in twain even as she continued considering everything she would have to ensure that she accomplished.

The second and typically unavoidable mistake made was exiting the dungeon. Not that there was much recourse to that beyond staying in the dungeon until their Experience was fully drained and they died, but the average adventurer didn’t- couldn’t- know the solution to that.

Inke did.

There were more than a few ways to check the number of instances a dungeon currently had open and how many it could support at a maximum. People had tried to fake their deaths, but it was easy to tell that they were still in the instance.

Here was something that was common knowledge: a dungeon couldn’t put their core into an instance.

Here was something that wasn’t common knowledge: how to reach a dungeon’s core.

Shatters, however, wouldn’t be particularly effective if they had no clue on where the core was located and, thus, couldn’t shatter it.

Just as last time, she dodged a storm of metal feathers hurled at her and continued fighting.

Several factors would work in Inke’s favor. When the number of instances dropped and she didn’t appear, everyone would assume she had died, especially due to how quickly it would occur. With the low ranking Inke had demonstrated and the way she’d entered alone, no one would be terribly surprised at that.

Furthermore, when Inke exited the dungeon, she planned to have the dungeon make her a separate exit. If it refused, she could always threaten it.

And if Inke ended up destroying the dungeon in the end…

Well, there wouldn’t be much a need to hide, then.

The door to the boss room loomed in front of her, and Inke steeled herself.

Hopefully, she could finish it within fifteen seconds or less, as Inke didn’t know what the guardian might be like. If she were lucky, the guardian would also only be around Silver IV, but with how unusual the Dungeon-y Dungeon of Dungeons (Without Dragons) was, Inke wasn’t willing to risk it.

Fifty-Fifty, then. Harin wasn’t around, and there was no one else for her to accidentally hit. On the off chance that Inke lost the gamble, she had the Health to survive the hit. Based on the Lightning Strikes of her previous visit, the boss couldn’t have more than a thousand Health or so, even in its so-called ‘second stage’, something she’d never seen before.

Lightning Strike would work, as well, but the Mana cost was great enough that it could be impactful in a battle against the guardian.

“Flight,” Inke said.

Activated Skill: Flight (Soar)

Mana Drain: 15/second

Mana Activation: 550

Passive Status Effect Gained – Flight: Movement Speed 20 ft/s

Her mana dipped dangerously low, and with both Soar and Gust still activated, she would run out within a few minutes.

Inke pushed the door aside, charging into the boss room.

Everything was the same as before, from the egg in the center to the cavernous ceiling, but Inke didn’t stop. “Activate Bond: Ignari.” As the egg began to crack open, she added, “Fifty-Fifty.”

Activated Skill: Fifty-Fifty (Ignari)

Mana Activation: minimum – 1; used – 150

Damage Wager (5/MP): 750 HP

Skill Weakened – 13/25 Bonds: 52% decreased chance to hit intended target

Intended Target: [???]

Target: [Inke]

Damage Reduction: x0.8

Shadow-Realm: failed to activate

By a Slim Margin: failed to activate

Total Damage: 600 HP

She winced as the pain washed over her, but Inke still had Health to spare, and her regeneration was already kicking in.

The egg began to flash with light.

“Fifty-Fifty.”

Activated Skill: Fifty-Fifty (Ignari)

Mana Activation: minimum – 1; used – 150

Damage Wager (5/MP): 750 HP

Skill Weakened – 13/25 Bonds: 52% decreased chance to hit intended target

Intended Target: [???]

Target: [???]

Total Damage: 750 HP

It crumbled, dissolving into ashes, and Inke paused. She wasn’t sure if its final form would still activate after Inke had used Fifty-Fifty.

Nothing moved in the ashes, and Inke mentally shrugged. Presumably, the boss needed some sort of physical remnants to recover from, which she didn’t provide it with.

EXP Gained

[???] slain: 2,500 EXP

EXP Absorption – The Dungeon-y Dungeon of Dungeons (without Dragons): 0.5x

Total: 1,250 EXP

No loot dropped from the corpse, but Inke figured it was another side effect of Fifty-Fifty.

“Deactivate Bond: Ignari.” Her other Skills gained from the sword also turned off, and Inke added, “Deactivate Bond: Soar.”

She strode past the ashes, pushing aside the temptation to kick them and watch the pile scatter in the air. As Inke approached the final door, she kept Ignari out, at the ready. While the dungeon had included its teleportation in the instance, and she hadn’t encountered anything more last time, Inke had met more than a few guardians who attacked from ambush.

Beyond the door lay an engraved circle on the floor, one that she knew was mostly for show. Where mortal Architects might require additional adornments to construct permanent, reusable versions of their Skills, dungeons had complete control over their interiors. And one with power over Space, even more so. A simple anything would have sufficed as a trigger, whether that was a small carving of a square or a sculpted dragon.

Inke carefully stepped around it. While the dungeon didn’t have the power to directly inflict anything upon her or create anything new while she was inside, it could certainly utilize past creations.

There were certain, immutable rules that dungeon cores were bound by, despite all of their power.

“By the authority invested in me as a challenger to the Dungeon-y Dungeon of Dungeons (Without Dragons),” Inke began, “I accept another in turn; I challenge the guardian of this dungeon.”

Vague variations on the phrasing worked as well, but there was a reason that random adventurers weren’t accidentally discovering how to reach the core.

Well, and the fact that any adventurer in an appropriately leveled dungeon probably wouldn’t be able to defeat the guardian, and there was no escaping from a challenge against the guardian.

Inke was a traditionalist, anyway, when it came to this sort of thing. She’d always thought the formal version of it sounded the most refined.

There was a grinding noise, and Inke raised an eyebrow, surprised that the dungeon had chosen to go for a physical method of transportation instead of using its power over Space. Dropping an adventurer into the guardian room without the time for the mental preparation that came with physically entering could easily grant the dungeon an advantage.

Cautiously, Inke made her way into the guardian room as the door ground shut behind her. Do or die.

When nothing occurred, Inke tightened her grip on Ignari and backed up until her back hit the door. She looked up at the engraved ceiling, checking along the sides and edges where it met the wall. For some reason, very few adventurers ever looked up, so a guardian on the ceiling was always popular.

Either Inke was missing it, which was a possibility without Ignari activated, or the boss wasn’t on the ceiling. Inside the rest of the room, there were only more of the engravings along the walls and a stone tablet in the center.

She edged closer.

From a closer distance, Inke could see that what she had originally thought to be an oddly rough surface was tiny, smooth grains with a similar texture to sand. On the top edge of the tablet, there was a raised carving of a small, curved arrow pointing left and a circle.

Inke stayed alert, Ignari gripped in her right hand for several minutes. At the five-minute mark, Inke began to wonder if it was some sort of unusually patient guardian.

At ten, Inke gave in. While she didn’t let her guard drop, Inke moved over to the walls to further examine the engravings. From a distance, they all looked rather indistinguishable and decorative, but at a closer examination, there wasn’t a clear theme to them. Rather, quite a few of them actually looked quite similar to the engravings above the boss door.

She considered the possibility that the room was a puzzle. Puzzles weren’t exactly uncommon in dungeons, but this was the first that Inke had seen as a guardian.

If the engravings were information about the puzzle, that made it much more likely. However, that hypothesis was impossible for her to confirm since she couldn’t read them.

Puzzles typically had some sort of punishment for failing, and the Experience required for the dungeon to create the puzzle was directly proportionate to the punishment and whatever was necessary to create the puzzle itself. Beyond that, however, the only requirement on the complexity of the puzzle was for it to be solvable using the given clues.

Very few dungeons, however, were creative enough for that. As a guardian, it was entirely possible that the only punishment for the puzzle not opening was that the door wouldn’t open, and Inke would eventually die of either dehydration or starvation.

Suffocation was a possibility, as well, but dungeons typically had some method of funneling in fresh air.

It was honestly rather creative, and Inke would have applauded the dungeon if the puzzle weren’t in her way.

As it were, most of the Experience investment in the guardian room had likely gone into reinforcing the doors and the room.

Inke decided to test that theory.

Walking over to the far door, the one that had to lead to the core, Inke dragged Ignari down the stone.

Ignari had several properties that the average sword didn’t have, one of the least of which was being supernaturally sharp and never dull. While the blade suffered no damage, a small, shallow groove appeared in the door.

Inke frowned, stepping back. Depending on the door’s thickness, it could take her several hours to even fully cut through a part of it, though it was possible. If she wanted to create an opening, Inke might have to spend a day or more, something that she certainly wanted to avoid. The stone had to be something similar to what might be found in a Gold dungeon, or Ignari would have cut through easily.

Luckily, Inke wasn’t restricted to only that.

It would be a shame to use even more Soul Shards, but that was better than the alternatives.

Inke activated Ignari yet again and said, “Storm’s Avatar.” A screen formed in front of her.

Activated Skill: Storm’s Avatar (Ignari)*

Mana Drain: 9,000/minute

Status

Effects

Stat Increase – AGI: +450

Stat Increase – END: +450

Stat Increase – STR: +450

Stat Increase – REF: +450

Gained Passive Effect – Flight: Movement Speed 25 ft/s

Gained Passive Effect – Swift: Movement Modifier x5

[6 Passive Effects hidden]

Gained Passive Effect – Lightning-Proof

Gained Passive Effect – Aesthetic Breeze

Skills

Gained Skill: Armor of the Storm

Gained Skill: Weapon of the Storm

*All effects weakened by x0.52 due to 13/25 Bond Slots.

Visually, very little happened besides Inke’s hair beginning to swirl around her and the edges of her cloak flapping in an invisible wind, but she could feel the new physical power.

Even starting at her maximum Mana, Inke couldn’t keep Storm’s Avatar up for more than a minute and a half, but she didn’t need long.

Surging forward, Inke punched through the door. Shards of stone flew all around her, several impacting her skin, but they glanced off. A few tore through her cloak, but she could have it repaired.

As the dust settled, Inke slipped through the hole she had created.

It was ornate, especially for something that a dungeon didn’t want someone else to ever enter. Tall, gilded columns framed the room, and the similar patterns to the guardian room spiraled their way up the walls. On the back wall lay an expensive, yet simplistic, mosaic of a figure holding a pitch-black sphere, as if a child had been given the leeway to design a mural embedded with Crystal and metal tracery.

In the center, however, was the dungeon core. It rested in a divot, not unlike the boss’s egg. While pitch-black in color, blue cracks traced their way across the floor to meet underneath the core. That would be the Experience flowing from the nexus of the ley lines, then.

She walked closer, wanting to communicate with the dungeon core. However, before Inke could do so, a voice rang through the air.

“You utter, complete imbecile! I warned you that this would happen, but did you listen to me? No! Now, we’re both going to die, and this all could have been avoided if you had taken my advice.” A streak of bright purple and teal zipped through the air, taking shape in front of Inke as it slowed down. The dungeon fairy hovered there, crossing his arms as he faced the dungeon core. “I know better than you. Why can’t you understand such a simple-”

The dungeon core flashed, communicating something to the fairy. He whirled, only then noticing Inke standing there.

Muttering in some language unfamiliar to Inke, the fairy swore, “Sidarth.”