Elania coughed and tried to blink away the blur in her eyes as dust, and the shouting of men filled her senses. It took a few seconds before she realized she was on her back, head nestled on another girl's lap. As the face came into focus, she felt a slight familiarity, but her fuzzy head couldn't come up with a name.

"You're pretty."

It was a stupid comment, the other girl's face was covered in soot and ash, and her long dark hair had come loose into a tangled mess. It was the first thing that came to Elania though, and served to draw Yolani's attention from the nearby activity of the Guards clearing the rubble.

Yolani, that was her name.

Rather than answer her inane comment, Yolani looked down and frowned, pressing a mana shard onto Elania's forehead. It was a tiny crystal, barely able to hold a couple of units of charge, but Elania noted her power gauge greedily consumed everything it contained.

"What did you do?" The questioning hiss that came out was somehow admonishment and incredulousness mixed into one, and Elania didn't know how to respond.

She barely remembered what had even happened. What had she done? Blown up the ones trying to kill them? Them? Hadn't she been alone for a long time?

"I signed the contract. Somehow there's so much confusion no one knows what's going on."

Elania tried to answer and sit up but moving and talking proved not to be an option. That was alright, Yolani's lap wasn't unpleasant, and she was too tired to worry about anything else.

The small trickle of Power worked to heal her more, and the last thing she remembered before passing out again was Yolani's face.

"Why are there so many people now?" Elania frowned as she looked over the large crowd that had gathered. There were so many more people at the Dungeon entrance than before that it looked like a riot in the making.

"Most of them are buying yesterday's haul. Everything that comes out of the Dungeon is usually useful to someone. The Syndicate taxes not just any money or shards that come out, but goods as well, remember?"

Elania did remember, but the scale was way more than she had imagined. They'd done the first level, which was for complete beginners, and they'd seen nothing more than a few weak goblins and oversized rats. She'd done her best to drain the Power out of them, despite the fear of gaining their affinity, but it turned out the monsters inside the Dungeon weren't entirely natural.

Or at least that was her theory because when they had gone back in for a second run, things were almost the same. Just as if it had been a game resetting the level for them. She had been told the first level always reset like that, and that was why new runners always tested themselves on it first, to make sure they had a handle on things before moving on to deeper floors that were more random and dangerous.

"And others can be on the same level of floor as us, and we won't run into each other?"

"Only on the transition floors at the end of every five levels can you run into another party, that's why we will only go down to Level 5 today, there can be… dangers running into others."

Yolani cut off her explanation as they started to bypass the line and a large man stepped in front of them.

"No cuts in line, not even for a pretty girl like you."

"We're delvers, not customers." Yolani pulled her arm back, moving her cloak away and lightly resting her hand on her 'Gunwand' while not backing down at all.

Magic-users, in general, were held in a bit of awe by most people, Elania had gathered. Artificers themselves were considered a type of one, with a reputation of being a bit more unhinged than most considering their ability to accidentally destroy things.

It wasn't an unwarranted stereotype from everything Elania had seen, although she was sure Demons were seen in a much worse light. She didn't end up needing to step forward and adding any more menace, though, as the guard's frown quickly turned neutral, and he gave way motioning them forward.

There weren't enough delvers compared to customers to need a line, the Dungeon readily accepting as many people into its maws as would dare to enter it.

That didn't mean they didn't get held up, though, as the Syndicate had a checkpoint right under the entrance. Even if they weren't from The Guard, they still had the same appearance as guardsmen, the post manned by five men, all of a respectable level in the 300s. She was sure there were a lot more roaming around in the crowd out of sight, or even stationed within bowshot or magic attack range in the numerous buildings surrounding the square.

Essentially, the Syndicate had the area on constant lockdown. Going against their rules regarding the Dungeon was in the same category of bad idea as trying to break through one of the city entrances.

From Elania's point of view, there wasn't much difference between the way the Syndicate had their checkpoint set up and how the city had the Guard along the border, except that the magic barrier was missing. The tax was different, too. Rather than pay money or mana…

A bored bald man with a notebook picked up a quill, "Leader, Team, Floor?"

“Yolani Devon, Artificer, 78. Elania Reyes, Lesser Demon, 49. Henri, Fighter, 278. Fifth."

"Just the Fifth?"

"Yes."

All of that was public knowledge to anyone with [Identify] so Elania wasn't sure why he bothered to ask, but he wrote it down as Yolani spoke dutifully. Maybe it was just some sort of formality.

"Tax will be two small shards or one monster core. Or fifty percent of what you find, whatever is more."

Yolani nodded, but the man continued.

"Any attempt to avoid paying the tax on return will result in an immediate judgement against you by law and subject you to the penalties of indenture until your debt is repaid. Cost of keeping and maintaining your indenture will be subtracted from any income derived from—"

"We know the penalty, you don't need to go over all of it."

He glowered but waved them on toward the large gates. They likely didn't open very often, Elania realized; two smaller doors built into the gate were more in-line with their group size. She wondered if someone had ever sent a group large enough to need the castle-sized gates or if they were only there for show.

The large square room had no other entrances or exits. A circular raised dais sat in the center; five pedestals sat in an X formation in the center of it, each one corresponding to a different level. Two Syndicate guards were leaning against the far wall, bored out of their minds as far as Elania could tell. They didn't even bother straightening up as the group entered.

No one else was present anyway; if there were any other Delvers, they'd already departed. The room was considered a 'transition' floor, and they were all essentially the same. There was one at the end of every fifth level, allowing delvers to skip four floors if they chose.

Elania didn't really have any opinion on the way it worked one way or another. It was almost sort of boring; she'd seen the same thing in a lot of video games before. Who or whatever had built the system of the Dungeon had been unoriginal in that regard. It pretty much defaulted her attention on one thing: how much Power she could suck out of the mobs and whatever mana crystals they could collect.

There wasn't much point in philosophizing about it when survival was a much more closer worry.

Yolani led the way to the central pedestal, and Henri and Elania followed close behind. There wasn't anything fancy required, although they all needed to be touching when she pressed down on the red orb.

The transfer was anti-climatic, the world just bent slightly, and then Elania's ears popped, the guards suddenly blinking out of sight despite not much else changing. The transition rooms seemed to be largely copies of each other. A large opening replaced a wall leading down a dark ruined hall.

"Henri can take the front. He should be able to kill pretty much everything on his own."

"What?"

Yolani pulled out a stick and tapped the tip of it, a white light bursting into life.

"I'll hold this, so you can see."

"I'm still at the part where I am supposed to kill everything. I'm just supposed to watch---"

"You're spying on Elania for The Guard. Writing down where and what she is doing every hour in that little notepad of yours. We make it easy for you to keep track of her. Now's the time for you to make it up to us."

"I'm really not supposed to be interfering, though."

"We're both resource intensive classes. You're not. It's free swing a sword around, it costs money for me to blast things, and if Elania gets hurt or has to use her Power it will cost even more."

"If I get hurt, I don't actually heal—and swinging a sword isn't free! It takes a lot out of someone to fight."

"We'll feed you something on the way back."

"Somehow, I feel like I'm being abused."

"If something dangerous appears, I'll take it out with my gunwand. If there's a big group Elania will assist you. It's only the fifth level, it'll be fine. Doesn't The Guard pay the Syndicate for those big training exercises every year for the new recruits?"

"Yes, and it's a huge waste of time. The goblins on the first level aren't anything like the real ones outside the city."

"Well, it's the first time a lot you do any real fighting, and it's super safe, so it seems pretty smart."

"You didn't hear our Captain complaining about how much gold it cost, though."

Elania started to hum to herself happily as Yolani and Henri kept chattering back and forth. She'd picked up a lot just listening, and she smiled as a happy feeling lightened her step. She was grateful that she'd taken that step into Yolani's shop.

Oh, the fight and almost dying part was pretty bad, but finding Yolani and having her on her side had saved her from probably making a lot more mistakes and flailing about.

It also felt good to know what she needed to do and having a purpose other than 'just keep going and hope to survive.'

Rebuild her power base, which was a lot harder inside the city than outside of it, for the obvious reasons that there weren't wild animals or monsters everywhere for her to drain.

Help Yolani build her shop up, which was definitely an excellent way to repay the other girl for having literally dropped a bomb on her last one.

Listen to everyone talk, which helped her build up her knowledge of the world around her. That wasn't always easy, but she was starting to figure things out, minus the strange bits about herself.

Then she needed to build up her equipment and possessions; even though they were collecting the mana crystals, they were generally too precious to let her eat, compared to getting gold to purchase supplies or paying taxes, so that was a slow process. Still, she had squirreled away one shard with Yolani's blessing so far.

Then there was---

Henri interrupted her thoughts when he suddenly stopped, and Elania almost bumped into his back.

"Goblins. Two. Sword and spear."

Elania had her knife out, and Yolani already had her wand in hand just in case. Both the girls nodded, and Henri continued forward, his sword leading the way with the light stick held up in his other.

Elania could see the two green things before the light ever touched them. The two creatures spotted them well before then as well. They looked just like the goblins Elania had seen in the ruins before reaching the city, small green creatures with warts and growths on their skin, along with primitive loincloths and weapons.

As soon as the light touched them, it acted as some sort of signal, and the two monsters screeched rabidly and charged without any tactic at all.

That was the huge difference between the goblins outside the city and the ones from the Dungeon. Henri had mentioned it earlier, and she had noted it herself.

These had no sense of self-preservation, completely mindless in their assault. Still, Elania braced herself and prepared to jump to either of Henri's flanks if one got around, but she needn't have bothered.

The sword-bearer jumped into the air with a wild swing, and the spear one tried to stab from below, but a single swing from Henri smashed the airborne one down on top of the spear wielder. The result was the disarmament of them both. A swift follow-up coup de grace ended both of them, and the whole exchange only took a few seconds.

"I told you. Level five. Easy."

"Fine, fine. If a dozen show up, I expect you to save me."

"You know the limit is five for this level, even in the final room."

Elania moved forward and put her hand on the goblins. She'd gotten over being squeamish at the thought of absorbing things.

The result though was the other big red flag Elania knew that the things in the Dungeon were somehow different, artificial.

She usually pulled a few dozen units of Power out of a Darkwalker. A bit less for something like a Ralfot. Goblins, she figured, should be somewhere in between.

In the Dungeon everything only gave her a single point of Power. She'd even had a few that only drew partial points or didn't even move the counter. She hoped they'd give a bit more once on a harder floor, but as she watched the corpses disintegrate, Elania's power gauge barely budged.

[Hud]

Power: 67 / 277

Level: 49

Clock: 9:39

She only gained one point from the two of them. Actually, she corrected herself, probably two points. Her natural drain rate probably had expunged one, and they'd made up the difference. She still needed to collect at least two hundred more before she'd be at 'normal' strength.

"Wow, that's handy. I won't need to clean anything up from this?"

Elania smiled up at Henri, who had been about to wipe his blade, and nodded. "Saves a lot of cleaning."

Yolani was grinning just as much as the first time Elania had shown her. The Artificer couldn't help but poke at Henri some more, "See, no reason to complain now. Lead the way, goblin slayer."

He grumbled, but they started down the path again.