Devan, Elia and Avery the mage girl was heading to the location of the dungeon core, they guessed that the darkening sky and lightning storm on the far outskirt of the dungeon, would be their best bet of finding the unstable dungeon core.

Devan and Avery were standing far back from the battle currently going as Elia smashed through every monster that dared to attack them so far on their journey. Avery would blast foes with her fire magic that were coming towards on them on the side which Elia couldn't quite get to.

"So you and Elia huh?" asked Avery. She was still blasting enemies with her magic but since they were only lower-tier monsters, a huge number of them would be instantly killed with one of her fire spells. Devan however was quite relax as all he did was just stand there, observing the battle with mild interest.

"It's not like that." answered Devan turning towards the red-haired mage.

"But she seems to be very possessive of you and I've never seen a slave and her master interacting in such a way before." said Avery.

"I don't think of her as a slave at all. She's just a victim of circumstance." defended Devan.

"Besides we're not really as close as you think we are. She has not told me much about herself apart from her name and all I gathered so far is that she has been through a lot recently. Think of me as her emotional crutch, I am the best thing that happened to her after her horrific experiences whatever that might be in recent months." Devan paused as he winced at a particularly gruesome scene of Elia cutting a snake monster into pieces with blood and guts splattering everywhere.

"The only reason she's obsessed and protective of me is that she doesn't want to lose the only good thing in her life. With all the shit that she has been through, I wouldn't be surprised that she is at her breaking point, I'm basically the tether that's holding her sanity together." he continued.

"And you don't feel that way about her at all?" asked Avery curiously.

"You mean romantically? No, I think of her more like family besides we have only been together for a span of a couple of days, and furthermore, someone like me doesn't deserve something like that." said Devan, he frowned suddenly remembering an awful memory from when he was still back on earth.

"Do you really believe that?" asked Avery raising her eyebrow.

Devan merely shook his head and smiled leaving a confuse Avery as he walked towards Elia who is covered in blood. Devan took out a cloth from his pocket and wiped Elia's face clean diligently. Elia smiled at the worried look her master gave her.

"You definitely need a bath." said Devan chiding her gently.

"Well someone had to do all the work, you and Avery are too busy flirting with each other, no wonder you guys are quite clean when compared to me" replied Elia, a bit of bitterness in her tone when she said the last bit of her sentence.

"We were not." laughed Devan as he ruffled her silver hair affectionately.

Elia grabs his offending hand pulled it off her now messy head with an annoyed look on her face. Avery sighed at their lovey-dovey interaction. She walked towards them with a playful look of exasperation.

"Come on, you two love birds, we have to keep going. The dungeon core isn't going to fix itself." she quips.

"Well at least someones excited." retorted Devan and he laughed as Avery glared at him and stuck her tongue out.

Devan, Elia and Avery then proceeded to walk towards the most ominous looking part of the dungeon. As they got closer to the area filled with darkness and lightning storms, the monsters they encounter also increased in strength. After finishing off the last member of the monsters that were attacking them, Elia was breathing heavily, the consecutive number of battles taking quite a toll on her body and stamina.

Avery, on the other hand, was also panting as she was running low on mana. Devan took a look at both of them worriedly.

"Maybe we should find somewhere to rest for a few minutes." Devan suggested.

The two girls nodded at his suggestion to exhausted to talk. Devan led them into a large tree and proceeded to use his magic scrolls to blast a giant hole into the tree, once a huge hole has been created, the trio proceeded to go inside and Elia sealed the hole up with her ice using her aura art. Avery lit up their refuge with fire magic using a spell called ball of fire a low-tier 1 spell.

All the spell does is create a floating ball of fire made of mana and is mainly used for lighting up very dark places.

"There's just too many of them." complained Avery as she sat down, resting her back against the inside bark of the tree.

"What could have happened to make the dungeon unstable." wondered Devan out loud.

"Could be a number of reasons, maybe the dungeon core is undergoing an increase in level but this type of situation has never happened before. Usually when a dungeon levels up there would be no disturbances or cause every floor of the level merging into one as that would cause the dungeon more harm than good as its location would be exposed and dungeon cores do not like being exposed out in the open as they are very fragile." replied Avery.

"However there could be another explanation as to why this strange phenomenon has occurred. Maybe someone is trying to kill the dungeon core or corrupt it." continued Avery.

"I have a really bad feeling about this." said Devan as let out a deep sigh, closing his eyes in worry.

Elia just stayed close to Devan resting her head on his shoulder and fell briefly to sleep.

"Our princess over here seem to not care too much, especially since she's very comfortable in your arms." teased Avery.

"She's just exhausted." said Devan smiling at the sleeping girl, as he took out a cloak from his storage ring to cover her with it.