I slumped down against the corridor wall, blood drenched dagger still clutched in my hand. I steadied myself with deep breaths; my hand was bleeding again. I could feel the pain of the freshly torn skin and muscle lancing through my [Pain Mitigation], more potent though was the throbbing in my right eye. I could feel I'd done some damage there. My eyes hadn't been able to handle the strain of that last Spell cast, not with the repeated straining my eyes had been forced to endure throughout this dungeon. My right eye was going to be out of commission for a bit. There was no way of knowing for how long, not with the nature of the damage and my innate healing between my amulet and Vipera. It might be minutes, it could be hours. There was just no way of knowing, though I felt confident the damage wasn't permanent at least. There was that small silver lining in the shit storm this dungeon had become.

  With my good eye, I glanced back out the way we came. Back to the tunnels. Where Felix's body lay. The remains and ruins of my failure. The silence was heavy, broken only by the soft clinking of glassware. As I nursed my injuries, Angus shuffled over and knelt down in front of me. He stuck his hand out, holding a trio of vials towards me. One was filled with a familiar looking red liquid, and another with a bright green; the final vial was bright blue.

  "Health. Stamina. Mana." Angus said quietly, voice barely above a whisper, "Wait ten minutes between each so they don't lose potency." I nodded, accepting the vials with my bloody hand. Angus rose and went seemingly to check on the other two members of his team. I yanked the cork on the red vial free with my teeth, spitting the cork out and swallowed it down in a single go. It was bitter, like I expected medicine to be, like burnt sugar and berries. It made me want to gag; I suppressed the reflex through sheer will.

  It hit the stomach, and I felt the healing kick in like a wave of whiskey on an empty gut—burning, then numbing, then a slow warmth spreading through the raw wounds. It took the hard edge from agony to a dull, manageable throb, but the eye was another matter. Even with my healing, it felt as if a cigarette had been stubbed out somewhere behind the socket. The worst of the bleeding on my hand stopped, though, and after a minute or two I could flex my fingers without wincing.

  The rest of the group settled in without a word. There wasn't much to say after a comrade was turned into a biology lesson by monster teeth. I watched Kels as he set up a perimeter, methodical and grinding through the motions like he could punch a hole in the wall through sheer force of routine. Signe checked her gear with the calm of someone who'd survived too many losses, her motions precise but lacking any real energy. There was nothing for it, for them, there was going to be a Felix-shaped hole in their lives, one that they couldn't mourn right now. That was for after the mission was over and done with.

  I could feel the System notifications itching in the back of my mind, but the gains felt undeserved. I had failed; there should be no gains after failure. That was supposed to be some kind of cosmic rule, wasn't it? I let out a harsh sigh; the notification opened with a flicker of intent. I needed the strength they offered; I always needed more power. Such was my life under the System.

  You have slain multiple [Snow Wyrms].

  You have gained multiple instances of EXP.

  You have gained additional EXP for defeating enemies stronger than you.

  You have slain multiple [Ice Wraith].

  You have gained multiple instances of EXP.

  You have gained additional EXP for defeating enemies stronger than you.

  You have advanced to level 29

  Class based Attribute points allocated.

  +3 Charisma. +1 Strength. +1 Dexterity. +1 Endurance. +1 Perception. +3 Free points.

  You have obtained a new Skill. [Dagger Mastery (Common)].

  [Dagger Mastery (Common)] - Increases User proficiency with daggers and other Short Blades. Enhances accuracy, speed, and effectiveness when wielding a dagger. Skill effectiveness improves with practice and higher Skill Rarity.

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  For the first time since I woke up in the Soul-Sheer, I gazed at my gains with a streak of dissatisfaction. It frustrated me to receive gains from a situation I viewed as a failure. I hadn't been able to get the team through the dungeon without a loss. I hadn't been able to keep Felix alive. That was my loss against this dungeon, and I god damned hated to lose. I let out another long, frustrated sigh as I tried to focus on the good here. I could feel Vipera deep within my soul; she didn't much like this particular brand of frustration I was feeling, that much I could tell.

  My dagger spun easily over and around my fingers; it felt more like an extension of me than ever before. It was as if I had gained a new limb in some ways. I put the dagger away in my [Inventory] and thumbed the cork on the next vial. It felt like it had been ten minutes by now, or close enough. I tossed the contents of the green vial back the same way I had the red vial. It tasted just as awful as the last. I stared up at the stone ceiling, eyes unfocused. The air pressed down, thick as silt in the aftermath of slaughter. I could feel the slow trickle of stamina returning as the potion did its work—aching fatigue replaced by that dull, itchy skin-crawl that comes with too much energy on a dead-end, nowhere to go but in circles. I contented myself with the thought that there was still work to be done and there would be more soon enough.

  For now, rest was required. The timer we were labouring under didn't matter right now. If we didn't rest, we would fail. That was all there was to it. This dungeon was larger, deeper and more dangerous than anyone had suspected. At any rate, it was far more dangerous than it should have been, according to the Banner. I couldn't help but wonder if there was deeper politics at play here; perhaps someone had fudged the numbers to get me here. Hoping that the increased danger of the dungeon with no warning would be enough to put me down.

  No muss, no fuss.

  As simple an explanation as that would be, I didn't think it was likely. There was no way of knowing how dangerous the dungeon was from the outside. Sure, the Banner could approximate its levels and the like by measuring the mana levels the dungeon was putting out, but that would never give the whole picture. There were simply too many factors to fully predict how difficult a dungeon would be from the outside, even if you could ballpark it. Given the rush that had been put on this job to account for the timer, I didn't think that anyone in the Banner was willing to risk the possibility of a dungeon Breach to remove me. It was possible, but not likely.

  No, there was something else at play here. Something deeper than simple politics amongst the members of the Banner. The shifting and posturing that occurred as people moved to gain or keep power. That may have played a part here, I couldn't quite rule it out, but it wasn't the whole picture.

  I let my hand fall from my eye finally, blinking rapidly as my vision cleared. It was still tender. There was still a slight throb behind it, but my vision was clearing more rapidly now as my eye adjusted and the damage was slowly healing. Glancing around the corridor, I took in the sight of Signe, Kels and Angus grouped together. Commiserating in their shared grief. I kept my distance, not because of the tension—though there was enough of that to cut with a knife—but because I could sense the thickness of their sadness, the hollow space in their ranks, and the way they moved around it without acknowledging it.

  Grief was always a strange animal.

  I'd seen it in others, felt its teeth in my own flesh a time or two, but whatever mechanism inside me was supposed to let me resonate with that pain had been scorched away long before I had even entered the Soul-Sheer and became a part of the insanity that was the System. Most days, I didn't even notice the lack. Today, with Felix dead for less than an hour and the others circling their loss like wolves with a wounded pup, the absence of anything like honest pain inside me made me feel monstrous in a way none of my Skills had. It was old pain, an old worry. An old scar I couldn't help running my fingers over when it came up. Grief wasn't in my nature, not for someone who wasn't part of my 'pack' so to speak, but I could respect their pain.

  Turning away from the sight, I popped the cork on the final vial and tossed the contents in my mouth. This one felt like I'd swallowed a mouthful of electricity. Interestingly, it had almost no taste at all, just the sensation of static racing down my throat straight to my gut. I let the rush of restored mana wash through me, bracing for the inevitable crash. It didn't come. This wasn't some high, not adrenaline or dopamine, just a refilling of my body's reserves. Even if at a far more rapid rate than normal recovery.

  Across the corridor, Kels sat, back against the stone, helmet off, his hair sweat-plastered and eyes bloodshot. Signe leaned her head on his broad shoulder, her wand propped between her hands. She was whispering something, low and urgent and private. I didn't want to hear, not really, so I did my best to tune them out. I had a feeling Kels would want to be moving again soon. He struck me as the type to bury the grief under action, so it wouldn't be long before we were on the move again.

  As it turned out, my prediction was dead on. Maybe five minutes after the third vial, Kels roused himself. He didn't say a word—just stood, rolled his shoulders, and jerked his chin at the rest of us. Signe pulled herself upright, face red and raw but set like concrete, and Angus just nodded, as if he had expected this exact moment since we'd slumped into that stretch of corridor. I was on my feet a moment later. I felt ready to take the next steps to take on the rest of the dungeon. I watched as Signe looked back towards the way we had come. Kels dropped a hand on her shoulder, "We'll retrieve him on our way out. No one left behind." We nodded as a group, affirming the statement. There was no argument or dissent. No one left behind, was a good one. I could get behind that; it was something I'd want for me and mine if they fell.

  We moved out, picking up pace with each step. The corridor here wound and wended, an endless linoleum of gray stone so nondescript it could be any office park basement in the world. The monotony was only broken by the occasional blue fire torch mounted in a sconce on the wall, blazing away, shedding its eerie blue light. We moved through at a light jog that ate up the distance ahead of us; we'd long since grown numb to moving through these empty corridors. They were like liminal passages, empty, no meaning but for what they brought us closer to. In minutes, we reached the end of the corridor, and the entrance to whatever the dungeon wanted to test us with next.

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