Serenity supposed it was good that they had a process in place for when a dungeon break happened and went outside the wall. It was significantly less good that they both needed that process and didn’t have enough people to have someone watch the dungeon. The only other good thing was that despite the fact that this was a Tier Nine dungeon, those monsters weren’t Tier Nine or anywhere close. There was always the chance that something more powerful had escaped and flown away, but there was a very good chance that this was a dungeon break or series of dungeon breaks too large for the walls but still relatively low power.

No, there was one other good thing he could say about it right now: it justified his fears; if they were having regular dungeon breaks, the dungeons weren’t being delved frequently enough. If he could call that good, anyway. Twenty giant lizards might be low Tier, but if they were what made it past the wall, it was likely that there were more monsters inside. Daryl certainly seemed to think that they shouldn’t try to handle it alone.

When they reached the portal node, Daryl hurried up to it and used it, but he didn’t call a portal. Serenity suspected he was using it to put out some kind of an alert; many cities had systems like that set up. He hadn’t looked into it so far, because it really wasn’t necessary on Earth; there were better methods that didn’t require someone to be at a node to contact someone else.

They stayed there for a few minutes while Daryl finished with the node. “Alain wants us to check the local area, especially in the areas that ought to have people. We should travel in pairs, just in case; I don’t think there will be anything too strong this far from the dungeon when we’ve only seen the desert lizards, but we still have to check. Anything could be a problem for people who aren’t prepared for it.”

“Even the frogs?” Naomi sounded doubtful.

Daryl paused. “Maybe not the frogs. Okay, anything other than the frogs, but kill them anyway if you find them. Naomi, why don’t you go with Gabriel; I’ll walk around with Serenity. That’s the best split I can come up with.”

Serenity shrugged; it seemed at least kind of reasonable. It put one of the two Tier Nines in each party, along with someone who could stand between them and trouble if it came down to it. It sounded like Daryl wasn’t expecting trouble, but that didn’t mean trouble wouldn’t find them anyway.

Four hours later, Serenity half-hoped that trouble would find them. The area was abandoned. It didn’t look like it had ever been densely populated, but what was left at this point was broken, rotting, rusting, and sometimes all three. Serenity wasn’t sure what half of it had been; some sort of large open building was the best he could come up with.

The other half he could be sure of; it was mostly cheap, dilapidated housing. Very little of it was well built; indeed, most of it looked like it was slapped together by people who barely knew anything about building things. Some of that look might come from the generally poor condition of the buildings, but Serenity was confident they’d never looked all that nice.

Unfortunately, they’d found just enough monsters to have to keep searching, especially since the place wasn’t actually completely empty. There were people living in some of the broken-down shacks; Serenity didn’t know why, but he didn’t need to know why to know that they didn’t need monsters on top of everything else they had to deal with.

It was especially true since almost all of the people out here were Tier One. This was the first time Serenity had noticed Tier Ones that weren’t essentially children on Asihanya; the planet made getting past Tier One relatively easy for almost everyone, yet for some reason these people either hadn’t achieved it or had someone fallen back to Tier One. The monsters they’d found this far from the dungeon were indeed the giant frogs Naomi had thought so little of, but frogs might actually be dangerous to Tier One people if they weren’t prepared, and no one could be prepared while they were asleep.

It was necessary work. It had to be done. It simply wasn’t something Serenity liked doing. He’d far rather be in the dungeon preventing the problem in the first place.

Even worse, he knew that every hour they spent outside the dungeon searching for anything that might have gotten loose was an hour they weren’t inside the dungeon keeping it from happening. High Tier people like the group Serenity was with could cover a lot of ground quickly and safely, but they weren’t the right people to be doing this. This was work far more suited to the many people who were Tier Three; they could also safely deal with the frogs and there were far more Tier Threes than people at Tier Seven or higher.

Fortunately, it seemed like Serenity wasn’t the only person who thought that. Five hours after Daryl reported the huge dungeon break, other mercenaries started arriving in the area. They’d run or flown from elsewhere in the city, instead of using the portal; the portal was apparently too expensive for Tier Threes.

The first people to arrive were individual mercenaries, who joined the search but did little more. An hour after that, however, a familiar face trotted towards Serenity and Daryl: Alain, the man who’d handled the desk at the Mercenary Guild when Serenity stopped in. This Alain was dressed in leather armor and carried a well-made spear; he looked like he came prepared to deal with monsters that were closer to animals than anything else.

Alain stopped when he reached a reasonable speaking distance. Despite the run in his armor, he didn’t seem any more winded than Serenity would have been; he’d clearly paced himself appropriately. “Daryl, Serenity. We’ve got things from here; I need you four to sweep the inside of the containment area then run as much of the dungeon as you can. I’ll have some other groups follow you in when we’ve cleaned up what we can in here, but just having you in there should help.”

“Naomi-”

The name was barely out of Daryl’s mouth when the sound of two people trotting drew Serenity’s attention to Naomi and Daryl, who seemed to have followed Alain more slowly. Serenity assumed Daryl noticed them as well, since he didn’t finish whatever he’d been about to say.

The “containment area” was the area within the wall. It was filled about three inches deep with water, which covered a layer of gloopy mud. Serenity took one look at it, turned on his Footwraps of Air Glide, and floated above it, but the three Silver Blades had to trek through the muck. When Serenity found out about the monsters hiding (sometimes not very well) in the shallow water, he was even more glad that he didn’t have to enter it.

Serenity never got a good look at the monsters. He thought they were probably some sort of tiny squid or kraken relative, but he simply couldn’t be certain. They started off trying to fight the small carnivorous mouths-with-tentacles with individual attacks, but there were enough of them that they soon changed tactics.

Gabriel’s Ice Wall spellwand had a secondary feature: it could strengthen itself with the water near where it was established. Gabriel couldn’t use it to directly hurt anything; the spell wouldn’t allow it. Serenity knew that was because of how either Gabriel or the wand’s maker conceived of the spell, but it wasn’t a bad thing. It would at least mean that the Ice Wall couldn’t do too much to allies if Gabriel accidentally got too close to someone with it.

After Gabriel used the wand to create a circle, the water inside the circular wall would be less than an inch above the mud. Serenity could drop a Fireball on that and roast the two-inch-long multi-armed beasts. Fireball wasn’t as effective in the soggy terrain as it had been against the giant lizards, but with the help of Gabriel’s wand, they were able to clear out the sodden ground inside the wall.

Naomi, Gabriel, and Daryl were all coated in mud up to their knees, with splashes above. Serenity wasn’t in as bad a shape, but he was still spattered with mud even though he hadn’t set foot in it. Far more important than the mud, unfortunately, was the smell; flash-dried mud, seaweed, and whatever the fishy things were didn’t smell at all nice.

Once the area was clear, they headed to the stone pedestal at the center of the containment area. Serenity recognized the pedestal as a relatively common setup for a clearly instanced dungeon. The dungeon needed something as an entry point and a stone pedestal was easy to find.

Serenity wasn’t expecting any surprises, since he hadn’t seen anything odd about the Cliff Dungeon on Zon. On the other hand, the Cliff Dungeon was in a weird state when he entered, since it was being controlled using a dead dungeon’s core; he probably should have tried entering a normal dungeon before he went in with a group of strangers. Fortunately, it seemed like no one else could see the same message he did.

[The Layered Dungeon greets the Dungeon Lord]

I am honored by your presence. Please grant me your blessing; if there is anything that is not in accordance with your wishes, please tell me and I will correct it.

Serenity shivered at the abasement of the message. He didn’t like it; it sounded like the dungeon was afraid of him and trying to appease him.

Please treat me like any other delver.

The dungeon didn’t respond immediately, so Serenity tried again.

I want to see what you’ve prepared for others. I’ll be traveling through the dungeon with a team you’ve seen before.

That seemed to work.

[Dungeon: Layered Dungeon]

[The Layered Dungeon is a creation of joy and exploration, stacking similar or disparate things together to achieve something as sensible yet unique as possible. It has no purpose other than challenge]

[Status: Active]

[Tier: Nine]

[Type: Environment, Level-Based]

[Maximum capacity per group: 5]

[Availability: Currently Unlimited]

[View Additional Information?]

[Enter Dungeon?]

[Bind Dungeon?]

[Command Dungeon?]

[Enter Core Space?]

Serenity selected Enter Dungeon. He could only guess what Bind and Command Dungeon did, but they were definitely not something he wanted to do right now. Perhaps they’d permit him to avoid killing dungeons in the future, though some were simply better dead. He didn’t like admitting that, but he was pretty sure the volcano dungeon would never have been happy without its continual eruptions.

When Serenity appeared in the dungeon itself, the first thing he noticed wasn’t the squishy ground or the terrible smell. Instead, it was the fact that he could feel everything about the dungeon level he was in. It was almost like being in his Rest from Death dungeon, except that he could only feel everything and not control it.

At least, he didn’t think he could control it. He didn’t want to try. Whether or not he could, it wasn’t the right thing to do; this wasn’t his dungeon and he didn’t know the dungeon core. Maybe he could talk to Aki about trying it when he got home.