The party appraised the tapestry. The last trap hung behind a stack of crates filled with empty potion bottles. The glass had yellowed with age and a fine sheen of dust settled across everything.

“What’s with the wall rug?” Daniel asked. “Wait! Is a dragon going to come out of that?”

The ‘wall rug’ depicted a male and female in full plate armor attacking a two-legged, winged monster.

Madi corrected Daniel. “It’s a wyvern. See how it only has two legs and wings? A dragon has four legs.”

“Does anyone know the story?” Emily asked. “It must be important to have been made into a tapestry.”

“Nothing comes to mind,” Madi said with a shrug.

Garret shook his head and Orrin stayed quiet.

“I definitely do not,” Daniel said as he stepped closer to examine the embroidered scene.

Madi gripped Daniel’s sleeve and gently pulled him back. “Let’s not trigger another trap.”

Emily cracked her fingers and took up position in front of the group. Her [Inferno Veins] crept along the bottles and crates, slipping up the wall and over the fabric. Her eyes were closed in concentration but Orrin noticed the furrow deepen as she left the veins up longer than she had before.

“Is something wrong?” Orrin asked quietly.

Emily cracked one eye open to respond. “The tapestry isn’t trapped. I think there’s something behind it, but I can’t find a way in to see. Does anyone object to me burning it?”

“It might have some sort of historical significance,” Madi began.

“Burn it,” Daniel and Garret said at the same time.

Emily gave Madi a sympathetic grimace and the fabric went up in flames.

“Madi, I thought you said there were only four rooms,” Daniel said as he peered through the smoke.

“There are only four,” she replied. “The first one and the double room we haven’t gone in yet are the three most explored but every record I found said this is the last room.”

“And a fifth one here,” Daniel waved Gertrude side to side in an attempt to clear the smoke. “Although, it seems like the door is kind of small.”

As the smoke finally dissipated, Madi and Emily inspected the small hatch. The tapestry adhered to the wall in a perfect outline, hiding the door completely. It was about two feet tall and three feet wide, with a long metal handle in the middle.

“Orrin, can you check if the hatch is trapped?” Emily requested.

Orrin pulled up his [Map]. The trap light was gone.

“I don’t get it,” Orrin said. “It’s disappeared. Did you burn the trap away?”

Madi shrugged and grabbed the handle of the hatch, pulling down. The door grated against the stone and the hinges screamed as she opened it.

Orrin ignored it as he pulled up his skills list and found [Trap View].

Trap View – See traps and hidden items within a distance on your map.

“Oh, [Trap View] lets me find hidden items, too,” he explained to the four backs of his party. “It’s weird that I don’t have some sort of different indicator between the two… Are you all even listening?”

Orrin put his hand on Daniel’s shoulder and he glanced back. Daniel moved to the side and gestured.

Behind the hatch, Orrin gazed into a deep recess carved out of the wall. It reminded him of an oven, with a wooden beam separating the hole into two sections, except the wood had obviously rotted. Or maybe the weight of what was inside had been too much for the simple wooden support.

Gold and silver. Ingots and bars of gold on top with silver bars under the broken beam. The stacks of precious metals merged in the middle of the vault.

Orrin’s mind stuttered.

“Madi… how much is in there?” Daniel asked.

Madi stayed silent, her mouth open as she muttered under her breath counting.

“If that’s pure… and I’m not counting the silver… it’s worth about three thousand gold, probably closer to three and a half with all the silver,” she finally answered in a hushed tone.

“That’s about five to six hundred gold for each one of us,” Orrin whispered. He hadn’t spent all his money on a big, stupid weapon like Daniel, but that much gold would still significantly upgrade his purse.

“I know I’m the one who made the deal with Pritus,” Madi said, still talking in a whisper, “but shouldn’t we report this to the Guild? That’s a significant amount of capital they could use for the defense of Dey.”

Orrin didn’t miss Garret’s glare at Madi.

“We should split it up before we go back,” Garret murmured. “Anyone who wants to turn in their share can.”

Emily pinched Garret’s arm. He yelped.

“We’re a party,” the fire mage said with fierce determination. “We decide as a group.”

Garret rubbed his arm and scanned the group. “Fine. Fine. I’m just saying, that’s enough for a person to retire on.”

“Exactly,” Emily retorted. “I’m not looking to settle down just yet. I’m with Madi on this one. I say we turn it all over and see if the Guildmaster wants to give us a finder’s fee.”

Daniel picked up one of the gold bars. “It’s much heavier than I would have thought.”

Garret wiped his eye and turned away from his lost fortune.

“I’m all for giving over some of it,” Orrin thought out loud. “Being pragmatic about it, we should keep a bar each. We did find it after all.”

They argued the merits of handing over the entire hoard or what percentage would be believable for longer than they should have. Finally, Orrin started putting ingots in his pocket, storing them away in his dimensional space.

“We can figure it out later,” he said as he slipped a few bars into his pocket. Garret’s eyes watched his actions with envy. “We’ve been going for hours and are exhausted. Should we move back to the first room and try to get some sleep?”

“Fine with me,” Emily said. She was blinking a lot and Orrin noticed her sway a bit as they stood there. “I used a lot of mana today.”

Once Orrin had stored the last of the silver in his [Dimension Hole], the party quietly made their way back to the first store room. Daniel pushed a pile of chairs under a table to make enough space for five bedrolls. Everyone crawled in but they all stayed sitting up.

Orrin noticed Garret and Emily watching him a bit more than normal.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Emily said too quickly and started playing with her fingernails.

“They’re worried you are going to sneak off,” Madi answered his question.

Orrin was surprised. “I won’t.”

Madi smiled patiently. “I know that. Daniel knows that. These two,” she hooked a thumb in their direction, “don’t know you as well as we do.”

Daniel yawned. “Orrin wouldn’t do that. He never buys anything anyways. I bought Gertrude and he complained for like a week.”

Emily and Garret had the decency to look apologetic but didn’t say anything.

Orrin slapped his head. “Gertrude! Daniel, let me see your sword.”

“What? Why?” Daniel picked her up from his side and went to hand the giant sword to Orrin, despite his questioning.

“The hilt is dragon bone,” Orrin explained, grabbing the sword and promptly dropping it. “Shit, I forgot how heavy it is.”

“She is a perfectly normal weight,” Daniel grumbled, lifting Gerty back up for Orrin.

Orrin used [Analyze].

Dragon Femur (crafted)

“Yes!” Orrin shoved his hand into his pocket and pulled out the tailbone.

[Analyze].

Dragon Tailbone

“Ha! It is a dragon bone!”

“Can somebody explain what is going on?” Emily asked, pushing her sleeping bag a few feet away from Orrin.

“My skill works on my own knowledge. The more I know about something, the quicker I can pick up what it is. But I don’t really know anything about dragon bones,” Orrin explained, shoving the bone back in his storage. “Daniel’s sword is made from dragon bone, so once I’ve used [Analyze] on it, the skill learns what it is. If it kept telling me just that it was just a tailbone, no big deal. But if it was a dragon bone, my skill knows what that is now.”

“And would tell you what it is,” Madi continued the thought. “We should go back and check those bones again. Maybe we missed more!”

Garret groaned. “Tomorrow. Please.”

Orrin agreed, “We can check it tomorrow before the other rooms. It shouldn’t take too long. You did say that was the biggest room, right?”

Madi nodded. “It’s also the most uncategorized. This first room is a dumping ground for the past fifteen years, with no real organization. Any good crafting materials are brought into the next room, the first one we’ll explore tomorrow. I think that’s where Pritus assumed we would really hit. It has a small room for random items not classified but deemed mostly harmless. I’m hoping we find something worthwhile there too.”

“I’m fine with gold,” Garret muttered.

“You could take your cut and leave, but then you wouldn’t get to try the Citrandish bow,” Madi said temptingly.

Garret’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean… I just…”

“She’s messing with you,” Daniel said with a laugh. “This is our party. We’ll figure out the loot and destroy a dungeon. Maybe we’ll find something better in there.”

“If we survive and actually destroy it, a few stat points are worth more than a bow long term,” Emily agreed.

“You just don’t understand how good that bow is,” Garret countered. “If half the rumors are true, I’ll be able to hit twice as far and twice as hard.”

“How are the stat points distributed in a dungeon?” Daniel asked Emily.

“You don’t know?” The mage looked at Madi. “You didn’t tell him?”

“He’s from another world,” Madi said with a shrug. “I forget he doesn’t know everything.”

Emily pursed her lips and put her finger to her chin. “Well… you know about the dungeon core, right?”

“Yep,” Daniel answered happily. “Destroy it at the end and all. But what exactly is it? And what do you get?”

Emily looked at Madi for help.

“I’ve never destroyed one either,” Madi said. “What I’ve heard was it seems random. Nobody can ever predict exactly what stats you get or even how many. I know that Brandt got-“

Madi went silent for a moment then continued. “A guard I know received a few strength points from one.”

“That’s similar to what I’ve read,” Emily said after a pause of her own. “Some think that certain types of dungeons are more likely to give certain stats. Fire dungeons usually have a constitution bonus, supposedly. But I’ve never seen any real statistics to back that up.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” Daniel said, leaning on one elbow. “Does the core drop from the final dungeon boss or does it just sit there at the end? Could we sneak by and destroy it?”

Emily smirked. “No, you can’t sneak by and destroy it. You know dungeons grow by ten floors at a time, right? Well, every tenth floor has a floor boss.”

“That I know,” Daniel chimed in.

“Once you defeat the final floor boss, the last door opens to a final room. That room has the core. As far as I’ve ever heard, nobody has been able to open that door without the boss being defeated. That’s also why the Silver Vaults and Aqua Chambers are still active. Each one has a floor boss that took decades to figure out how to defeat. From what I’ve read, the Silver Vaults still has a floor boss that is undefeated.”

“Floor one hundred and ten,” Madi whispered. “My mother died fighting off a dungeon break after a team tried and failed over a decade ago. The Vaults always sets off a dungeon break after somebody fails at that floor.”

Orrin watched quietly as the new party members absorbed Madi’s revelation.

“How could somebody go so long in a dungeon? Over a hundred levels must have taken months!” Daniel shifted on the floor.

Madi blinked and appeared thankful for the topic change. “Parties that take on the Vaults have to get permission to go that far in. That expedition was likely in the sixty-level range. The first eighty floors or so probably took them a few days, maybe a week?”

“Someday, we’ll get there, too,” Orrin whispered. Madi heard him.

“Yes, we will.” she smiled, with a firmness in her voice.

They chatted a bit more about the plans for the next day before Daniel yawned again.

“I’m going to sleep,” Daniel announced. “Last one up tomorrow has to help Orrin sort bones.”