The outpost of the Outer Tunnels was not quite as I imagined it to be. There was a bustle to the place as people moved to and fro in orderly paths marked by signs that had been propped up here and there. Oddly, there weren't that many people teleporting in and out of the place; just a couple that occasionally appeared in the same area that I was in. In fact, I only found one group of humans moving a batch of cargo boxes into another teleportation circle before disappearing in a flash of light.

“Hey, Newbie over there!” I turned to the voice aimed at me, finding a robed demon frowning at me. “Get out of the landing zone. We’ve got more queued behind you, so you need to move.”

I hurried away from my position, seeing as how I was just dumbly standing in the middle of a clearing filled with similar teleportation circles. Apologizing as I passed through the gates that led further into the outpost, my eyes took in the rest of the place.

Dilapidated would be a fitting word for it. Compared to the town in the room of beginnings, this place wasn’t even fit to be called a collection of shacks and boxes.

The room itself probably had to do with it, too. It wasn’t the biggest place to set up any sort of activity hub when considering the amount of people needing to skip the journey through the Newbie zones, and that showed as there was almost no room for any establishment beyond a forge or armory. Even the cavern’s walls were taken up as storage boxes for Dungeon materials took up the majority of the space.

Dirt and grime from the sheer amount of bodies passing through the area stained the air, and a sour stench of sweat practically coated my every breath as I took in the veterans of ambled through the outpost to their destinations. It took me a minute to believe that maybe everyone that came to the Outer Tunnels would stay longer than a day here, making the fact that they hadn’t showered in days a very concerning thing.

Then there were the veterans who populated the place. I shied away from their curious gazes, feeling wholly uncomfortable with the entire scene in front of me. Despite how well I was acclimating to the whole Dungeon, I still felt that everyone here was simply unreasonable with how they went about challenging the Dungeon.

After what felt like an hour or two of waiting, Dean and the rest of my group appeared in the area where teleportation circles were. It was a small, flattened portion of the Dungeon floor set aside seemingly for the purpose of allowing people to pass through. A metal fence sat around the clearing, barring anyone from accidentally coming across. I for one didn’t want to see what came about when someone entered the circle when someone was coming through.

Luckily, I was spared from that knowledge as Dean saw me waiting outside the entrance to the fenced-out clearing. He waved happily as Charlotte dragged Helen over to reunite the four of us, and I found myself chuckling a bit as the beastwoman hurriedly combed down the frizzled hair of her tail before Dean could notice.

“You look like you waited a while.” Dean commented, patting me on the shoulder. “How long did we make you wait?”

“It felt like hours.” I joked with him, but found Helen’s tail drooping and hurried to correct myself. “B- but, it wasn’t that bad. I got myself acquainted with everything here.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as Helen’s tail began swishing back and forth like normal. The woman then marched to the front of our group before clearing her throat. “While I appreciate your attempt to scout your surroundings, it was unnecessary in this case. This outpost is particularly cursed as most of the places here will shift as different monsters in the Dungeon fight over territory here.”

“What about the people here?” I asked. “You’re talking as if there aren't enough people here to stop that from happening.”

“Hah! I knew you were pretty funny, Glen!” Charlotte chimed in, happily linking her arm with Dean’s as the man gave me an awkward smile.

Helen sighed. “What she means is that there aren't enough people here.”

It took me a moment for that fact to set in, and I unconsciously stared at the throngs of people ambling around. There had to be at least a hundred of them at this outpost alone. “That’s a depressing thought.” I couldn’t help but say.

“Yeah, the Newbie area is pretty tame compared to here.” Dean said, and I found his smile a little less encouraging.

The topic was promptly dropped as quickly as I had brought it up. Helen had gathered us up to finally accomplish what we set out to do, and I was sent with Charlotte to get the rations for when we were tackling the Outer Tunnels.

I took the chance to look around the outpost, and found that what Helen and the others had said had quite a bit of evidence backing it up even if I didn’t completely believe them. All the small establishments that were there were clearly recently built with not much attention to detail. They all looked like a bunch of stands built with the intention to strip clean at a moment's notice, making it easier to do so when they were destroyed in whatever event Helen had indirectly said would happen. And while they didn’t explicitly say it, I knew there had to be something that happened to force a place with so many veterans to act like this.

It brought into perspective the fact that no matter what the Newbies called them, veterans were mortal in the end.

“You’re frowning again.” Charlotte laughed beside me, waving a brick-like ration in front of me.

These so called ‘freebies’ were what was allocated to us after Charlotte spent a couple minutes talking to a man behind one of the multitude of stalls around us. Honestly, no matter how many ‘essential nutrients’ the man said these things could provide, the bricks tasted like overly salted hard bread. It made no sense to me in any case, but I had teleported here in the first place, so I just went along with it.

“I’m just a little intimidated by all this.” I admitted. “Why can’t this many veterans solve the issues with the Outer Tunnels? You guys made it seem like there was no other option but to run.”

Charlotte hummed thoughtfully. Which was odd considering she didn’t seem to think about what she said most of the time. “Well, some people can fight, but the monsters in the Dungeon aren’t all that easy to take down. If its a small group, then maybe, but in the Outer Tunnels things like Featherkin all form communities in the hundreds. There are other things, too, but Helen will get mad at me if I tell you them.”

“You know, it’s getting kind of annoying for everything to be hidden from me.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Charlotte grinned wide enough for me to see her abnormally sharp teeth as her forked tongue flicked out to tap my nose. “If you want to know something, its better to find out for yourself.”

She chuckled to herself at some hidden joke there, leaving in the middle of a bustling crowd as I grumbled to myself. A couple people bumped into me as I followed after the cheerful demon, and I apologized to them, finding myself missing the larger streets in the room of beginnings.

“I’m afraid I won’t survive the truth if I find out for myself.” I mumbled, taking a moment to stare up at the glowing seeds that were stuck to the ceiling.

Despite there being enough to see, I found that the whole outpost was much darker than all the tunnels I had been in before.

Charlotte and I finished gathering everything we were told to get when we met up with Dean and Helen again. Without wasting any more time, Helen quickly led us through the outpost to one of the many tunnels that connected to the outpost. It wasn’t long before the four of us had traveled to the point that the constant sounds of movement were gone from my ears, and I finally took in the fact that I was in a place that was unlike the Dungeon I once knew.

This tunnel was no longer the massive, room-like one with lights perfectly illuminating the surroundings like usual. It was a meandering path that sloped up so hard that I felt my legs begin to burn while also dropping down fast enough that we had to climb down at parts. The walls no longer easily allowed the four of us to walk side by side with room to spare, and I found myself walking in the middle of the group as we crab-walked through particularly claustrophobic parts.

There was also the fact that the seeds that glowed were seldom to be seen in this path. It was only darkness that cloaked the floor so much that I could barely make out what the floor looked like at times. In fact, I was finding the light they supplied to be less and less as we went deeper. All I had to keep my thoughts from wondering if we were lost or not was the fact that Dean had never once looked panicked as he silently moved through the Dungeon’s corridors.

At one point, we had arrived at a fork in the path we were on, and as we were about to go down one way, a pair of fluorescent green eyes stared back through the darkness. My heart hammered in my chest as I reached from the new sword at my hip. It was short enough that it wouldn’t get caught on the walls, but I felt a bit of sweat beginning to pile on my brow at the thought of fighting in the dark.

Dean carefully backed up as the monster in the tunnel started to growl. He motioned for us to do the same, and I scrambled to match Charlotte as we backpedalled out of there. When the monster made no motion to follow us, Dean silently led us down the other path before he pulled out the map, traced some lines across it and moved on without an issue.

“What was that?” I whispered, barely keeping my voice from trembling.

Dean looked back at me from the front and gave a smile that didn’t fit the situation. “A new resident, I think. There were no monster territories marked on that path, but apparently some Earth Dragons made a nest there. They’re sedentary for the most part, so unless they had a clutch of eggs, leaving without a fight is the best option.”

“Dragons?” I swallowed a lump in my throat as I looked back to where we came from, fearing that another pair of eyes popping out in the darkness. “Aren’t those things a bit too much for the first floor?”

“For a Newbie, most definitely. We can handle one or two, but getting to the descriptor room is a better use of our time. Besides, Earth Dragons aren’t that bad compared to most things here; they almost never make nests with more than four.”

I didn’t like the possibility of meeting one in the first place. “What’s the exception?”

Dean didn’t answer immediately, his body freezing as his hand waved in front of him before he snapped his fingers. I wondered what he was doing for a second as I felt something like a thin blanket that passed by me for a second. Outer Energy, a portion of my mind said to me as I immediately tensed for a fight.

My own ability to sense energies was something that Dean had said would appear with time the more I practiced. Everyone would get something similar in the form of one of their senses being more attuned to picking out their own energies, and that inadvertently allowed them to sense other people’s energies as well. Still, I didn’t like the sensation of energies running across my body in the first place.

Dean silently heaved a breath, patting my shoulder. “Sorry, I thought I sensed something nearby. Earth Dragons tend to disrupt monster territories when they move, so you have to be careful when moving around them, too. As for your question before, I’d say the exception would be when an exceptionally powerful Earth Dragon comes along; it won’t be as powerful as a ‘floor boss’ or whatever you call them, but they’re definitely a terrifying thing. Usually, we just call them ‘Alpha’s.”

“Ah,” if anything, I wasn’t accepting the information easily. “Thanks.”

“Dean, focus.” Helen spoke up from behind us, and I flinched at her tone.

“Relax, Helen, we’re almost to the room, so its best to get the jitters out before the fight.” Dean chided.

The beastwoman snorted. “I am. Some of us don’t need to talk to ease their nerves, and I’m sure Glen needs to get his bearings before he fights.”

“We’re fighting soon?” I asked. “I thought it was just a descriptor room.”

Dean grinned in the low light, shaking his head from side to side. “Another lesson for my clueless, hopeless student-”

“Should you really be calling me that?”

“Anyways, you remember how I said that descriptor rooms gather energy to reset whenever they're used up, right? Well, that in turn attracts monsters from the Dungeon to gather around the entrance. And the stronger the descriptor the more monsters that might gather around.” Dean explained as Charlotte silently clapped as he was done.

I sighed. “So, there’s a fight before every descriptor room in the Outer Tunnels?”

“Can’t I act smart every once and awhile.” Dean sulked. “You don’t have to dumb it down so much.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re super smart, Dean.”

“So you see my great-” Dean paused abruptly, and froze in his tracks. I stumbled to a stop behind him, nearly bashing my face into his back at how quickly he stopped.

Helen pushed past me, carefully making sure I didn’t fall in the process. “What is it?”

I didn’t like the fact that Dean didn’t answer, and continued to silently peek around the corner. Helen followed suit before she too paused like a squirrel that had suddenly caught the eye of a tiger. Her tail had stiffened to the point that I felt it could be used as a spear. Charlotte lost her smile before pushing me forwards.

“Its best if you see for yourself, Glen.” She said without a hint of a smile.

Carefully, I followed her orders, and peeked around the corner to the strangely large room. Its walls and ceiling were much higher than normal, and the space inside practically dwarfed the smaller tunnel we were in. However, my eyes were on the monster in the middle of the massive room.

An equally large creature with skin akin to the crags of a canyon. Coarse, grey and gravelly scales covered every inch of the hulking beast. Its bulky legs were resting along the ground along with its belly, but my attention was more on the ivory, shovel-like claws attached to the ends of each leg that were easily as long as my leg and as wide as my waist. A tail that looked more like several boulders attached to its spine swept casually around it as it rested, goring a trench in the rocky ground as the uneven parts of it accidentally touched the ground.

Its head was equally enormous, and I found myself craning my neck to just take in its features. There was no neck to speak of; its head was just attached to its body like a cliff on the side of a mountain. Hot steam exited its mouth as it air left from the cracks in its boulder-like face where its mouth should be.

The name was at the tip of my tongue. A monster of this size and a presence I could practically feel from my paltry energy sense only went by one name.

“Shit, no wonder why I kept feeling something off with the Earth Dragons.” Dean cursed, and I felt like I had an idea of what he meant.

There was only reason why we weren’t attacked or chased off when we passed those Earth Dragons before. A very simple if terrifying answer that I felt fit quite well. After all, when there’s something within your territory, yet it is moving straight towards the boss, would there be any other outcome when it's victory was almost assured?

Fluorescent eyes stared at the four of us on the other side of the arena.

It was an invitation to challenge the Alpha of the Earth Dragon territory.

And behind it laid our destination.