They went back to the third floor.

  Penelope paused after she stepped onto the floor for the first time since her duel with Cirdor. The area where they’d fought the bosses had been cleared, even down to the crater that Stephen had left when he detonated the Ballisto. Her heart fell as she remembered his heroic sacrifice. There hadn’t been a grand gesture or speech. The fire Caster had simply said, “I’m going to try something,” and launched into an attack. His selflessness had probably saved the run, but that had also cost him his life and added his name to the list of people she needed to save.

  The wall around the boss room was also still in shambles, including the area where Circe’s belongings were buried. They hadn’t been allowed to take their meager possessions with them, so it hadn’t mattered that the two hadn’t gone back for the few things, but guilt ran through Penelope’s heart when she remembered that she’d promised her friend to unearth the belongings.

  “Wow.” Rendhe did a half-turn as she took in the surroundings. “We’re in a real Dungeon.”

  “Wait until you’ve lived in it for a few weeks.” Penelope shook her head as she looked at the dark woman. “It gets old real fast.”

  “Maybe, but do you realize how many people ever get to be in one of these?” The Mebope woman walked over to a charred tree and rubbed the soot between her fingers.

  “I’d hope there wasn’t anyone else who had to deal with a Demon incursion.” Penelope pointed towards 29D. “I think that’s where we’re supposed to meet our teacher.”

  In the corner of the wall, there was a building that hadn’t been there during the boss fight. Once the trio reached the new building, the sound of laughter filled the air.

  “HAH-HA!” A high-pitched voice called out. “I KNEW IT!”

  Penelope stopped at the door. Unlike the ones that Patrick built for their rooms on the wall, this one was seamless and had a control pad on the doorframe with a small screen. The entire structure already screamed of something from the surface, since none of their craftsmen had been able to create anything even remotely as complicated as a keypad or an automatic sliding door.

  “What do we do?” Rendhe looked over at Penelope. “Lady Husley didn’t give me a code.”

  Penelope swallowed. It wasn’t her favorite option, but with both of the Mebope looking at her for direction, she was going to have to take the initiative.

  She banged on the door with her fist. “HEY! This is Penelope Flynn! Lady Husley said you wanted to talk to me about monsters!”

  A crash rang out from inside the building, then more chaos as someone hurried towards the door. The metal barrier slid open, revealing a yellow Elf man in dirty jeans and a shirt that may have been white at some point but now was stained with various colors of monster blood.

  “You’re the slayer?” The Elf’s yellow eyes focused on her. “The one who killed all these monsters?”

  Penelope looked around the stained man into the room. Part of the wall had been knocked out to give him more room to store the corpses, and the bodies must have been moved here before the building had been erected, because there was no way that the chimera would fit through the door.

  “I helped.” Penelope looked away from the excited Elf’s gaze.

  “Where are my manners?” The yellow man wiped his hands on his pants. “Xaiq Thorne, master of all things demon.”

  Lanlo stepped forward and took the other man’s hand when neither woman made a move. “I’m Lanlo Chillau.” He pointed at Penelope. “Pen has already told you her name and this…” He motioned at the other Mebope. “Is Rendhe Betwsy.”

  “A pleasure, such a pleasure.” Xaiq’s face lit up as he shook Lanlo’s hand while keeping his focus on Penelope.

  She cleared her throat. “We don’t have a lot of time before we need to join the teams on the next floor.” She glanced back at the pair of portals on the back wall, then turned back to the Elf. “I know we’re behind the others, but—”

  “Nonsense!” Xaiq motioned for them to follow him into the building. “I’ve been saving these specifically for you!” He pointed at the remains of the bosses of the third floor. “You can learn a lot about the monsters on a floor by how they come together in one of the boss demons.”

  “Really?” Rendhe’s eyes widened. “Like what?”

  “Take the Demon Chimera, for example.” Xaiq walked over to the large corpse. “Each monster in a given column is fused together to create a host for the shadow to inhabit and how each of those monsters is put together determines the strength of the particular shell.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Wait, these are Shadow Demons?” Penelope glanced over at the blue Elf standing beside her. Jeru…

  “How is that relevant to anything?” The voice in her head grumbled. “It helps you understand how to kill them better, sure, but up until this point, you’ve been in a race and you haven’t had a lot of time to step back and evaluate how the things are put together.”

  “Yes, unlike most of the monsters that are on the main floor, these are simply husks that are piloted by intelligent minds like a vehicle.” Xaiq pointed at the pile of heads. “Four heads, which means that there is one monster that isn’t represented by the heads.” He looked at Penelope. “Do you remember what the monsters on that column were?”

  She didn’t have to think very hard. “The Oakorn and Caffon are missing.” Penelope pointed at the bark skin. “The chimera has the same hide as the Oakorn, so really it’s just the Caffon that isn’t represented on the surface.”

  “Did you notice a stronger healing factor?” Xaiq grinned.

  Penelope swallowed as she remembered just how difficult the monster had been to take down. “Yes.”

  “Exactly!” The yellow man snapped his fingers. “The fewer physical traits that one of the amalgamations has, the stronger the internal traits are.” He walked over to the main body and stuck his hand in the side of one of the gashes. “But the opposite is also true; the more it physically represents one of the base monsters, the weaker the traits it receives from that monster.”

  “So you’re telling me that because it’s covered in barkskin like the Oakorn, its Aura is its weakest stat?” Penelope checked quickly to verify that was the way the stats were distributed.

  “Not every time, but a lot of the time. It seems like the secondary and tertiary stats of the base monsters can also come into play when determining the final stats of the boss. There are also a few cases of when the stats are just a mess, but it appears that most of the shadows don’t put too much time into customizing their hosts.” Xaiq pulled out his hand, holding up a dried, green organ. “Care to guess what this is?”

  “Its heart.” Rendhe puffed out her chest.

  “Nope. It’s a breath sac.” Xaiq tossed the organ to the Mebope woman. “Do you know what happens if you can get deep enough into its chest to rupture this while it’s still alive?”

  “It explodes like a bomb.” Penelope took the dried green sac from the other woman and turned it over in her hands. It was easy to see that the sac had been much larger before it had shriveled up. There were also no marks on the outside of the sac to indicate that it had been damaged prior to being cut out of the monster’s body.

  “Not quite, but close enough.” The Elf took the organ back. “You need to puncture this while it’s full, so gauge how many breaths the monster is using, then get someone in close who can puncture it.” He trickled his fingers down like rain. “The breath inside will flood the monster’s body, liquifying it from the inside.” He grinned, then turned back to the open chest cavity and began rooting around until he pulled out a black stone the size of a baseball.

  Unlike the organ, this piece of the corpse had a nametag above it.

  “That’s a shadowstone.” Rendhe breathed as she looked from the item to the Elf.

  “Exactly!” He tossed her the black stone. “The two ways to kill a boss monster are to either kill the host or to shatter the shadowstone.”

  “So you’re telling me that the Shadows aren’t actually possessing the host body but are instead controlling it through this stone.” Penelope did her best not to glare at Jeru. The second way to kill the bosses would have been nice to know.

  “Hitting a shadowstone is almost always a lot harder than hitting the monster’s heart, so that isn’t really telling you much.”

  “How is hitting this any different from hitting a vital organ?” Lanlo took the shadowstone away from Rendhe. He bounced the smooth object in his hand. “Isn’t that thing’s heart bigger?”

  “True, but what we’re going to learn today isn’t how to hit the shadowstone, but how to disrupt it.” Xaiq snapped his fingers and motioned for the other man to give him back the stone. “While it’s not going to kill the boss, how much easier is it to kill the little monsters in a zone after the Shadow controlling them is killed?”

  “So what you’re wanting us to do is to sever the link between the Shadow piloting it and the boss, which would make the boss a lot easier to fight since the mind inside the boss would become a lot less intelligent.” Penelope sighed. I thought you said it wasn’t helpful.

  “I never said that disrupting the stone wouldn’t make the boss fights a little easier, but how many of the squares turned into absolute nightmares when all the monsters were freed from the Shadows and they rushed your group?”

  True. Penelope shook her head. “Wouldn’t that just make a more wild and feral monster for us to deal with?”

  “Yes, but for a few moments after you sever the link, the boss will be stunned, which will give you a window to throw attacks and spells at it without fear of being counterattacked.” Xaiq grinned. “So if you can focus on a single boss at a time, you can burn it down without endangering the rest of your group.”

  “Sounds like the Shadows will find a way to counteract that the very next floor after we do it.” Penelope shook her head.

  “Maybe, but we won’t know unless we try.” Xaiq grinned. “Plus the link between the shadowstone and the Shadow is similar to the mage / guardian bond. All of you should be strong enough to make one of those in the forties, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to show you the basics of how to create one of those now too.”

  A guardian?

  “We’ve talked about it before. Basically, you can let another being inhabit your mana pool, then summon their physical body. It’s meant to be a way for mana-dependent people to have another layer of protection, especially for the Healers and Buffers.” Jeru clicked his tongue. “You don’t want to do that though, because they’ll become aware of me and your status as a looper, but they won’t loop with you, which just makes things messy each loop that you reconnect with them.”

  Gotcha. Still, it can’t hurt to learn.

  Xaiq clapped his hands. “But first, let’s talk about the Demon hierarchy.”

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