The arch was a wound in the stone. Raw, black, It drank the daylight. The air around it hummed faintly, as if the pressure of all the ancient magic buried here could barely keep from escaping.

  Lia drew up beside him, her horse’s hooves scuffing loose stones. Her breath came slow and measured through her nose, but he could hear the faint catch in it. "Do you sense it?"

  He nodded, not trusting his voice. Even he could feel the mana here, pulsing raw, setting his teeth on edge.

  Garren moved close. “We could have ridden past a hundred times over and never known.” His voice had gone flat and low, eyes sweeping the walls as if preparing for something to emerge at any moment.

  Lia drew her cloak tighter. “It doesn’t make sense,” she whispered. “I’ve heard of overflows in lecture. They should bleed mana everywhere, sickening, impossible to ignore.” She looked up at the stones as if expecting to see the ripples. “But this. Nothing until we were on top of it.” She gripped her staff tight, knuckles whitening.

  Garren turned, gaze cutting into John. “How did you know to look here?”

  A dry taste flooded his mouth. If they pressed, he had no answer. All the lore, the countless runs, the endless repetition. What excuse could cover that? John realized, under the heavy weight of Garren’s stare, that he hadn’t quite thought through the consequences of his actions.

  He shrugged, aiming for indifference, but his voice came out thin. "My… mentor showed me old maps, old books. But this was supposed to be barely more than a crack in the rock, full of rats and easy experience, not this.”

  Lia frowned, studying him. The silence grew.

  “Is that how you knew of the ruins beneath the inn? The way you solved every puzzle? Completed every chamber?” Her eyes searched his face, head tilted slightly as though one wrong twitch might give him away.

  John worked his jaw, thinking desperately. “I spent years with those maps, and reading endlessly. Some things stuck.” He landed on at last. It wasn’t a lie exactly. But the thought of explaining a wiki, or a speedrunning forum, or what it meant to be the world expert of a niche video game, was impossible.

  Lia looked at him, blue eyes framed by the shadows of her hood. “Then you truly are what you seem.” Lia urged her horse nearer, so close he caught the faint, acrid smell of her nervous sweat through her perfume. “Should we enter?”

  Garren’s hand edged toward his sword. “No. It’s a death trap for such a small group. We mark the site and call for reinforcements. Not rush in blind.”

  Lia drew a long breath, then steadied herself. Her hand caressed the spatial ring on her finger. “I have only two crystals left. Enough to return quickly to Greyford and summon the others.” She turned toward John, her eyes worried. “But we can’t leave-”.

  “Yet you will. I’ll wait here with Bristle.” He patted the mule’s shaggy neck. The animal snorted, as if agreeing.

  Lia’s widened, disbelief flashing across her face. “You can’t be serious,” she snapped, her voice rising. “If another Carrion Mother emerges, you’ll—”

  “I wasn’t asking permission.”

  The words hung in the air. Lia’s jaw tightened, anger flashing in her eyes, but beneath it was fear. She opened her mouth again, then shut it, lips pressed thin.

  Garren broke the silence, “We would have missed it. We would have ridden this whole valley, searching, and come back empty.” He glanced again at the black arch in the stone.

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  “How much land would have been lost while it spewed monsters? Farms burned, families slaughtered. Towns destroyed.” His eyes fixed on John. “If you choose to wait here, then so be it. But do not be eager to throw your life away. You have promise.”

  The words rattled John more than the dungeon’s pulsing. Praise was the last thing he expected from the man who’d doubted him since they met.

  Lia stepped forward, her expression fierce. “Hear me, John. If another Carrion Mother comes forth, you WILL flee. You will not throw your life away.”

  She wheeled her horse, spurring it back down the trail.

  Garren followed without a word. In a moment, both were gone, swallowed by the ravine’s bends. Silence closed in as their hoofbeats faded. The wind shifted through the rocks, carrying the faint hum of the portal’s breath.

  John stared at the dungeon gate. The surface rippled, faintly, like oil under moonlight. The mana lines crawled across the stone in slow, deliberate patterns, pulsing to a heartbeat of its own.

  With a sigh, he turned to Old Bristle. The mule had settled near the cliff wall, ears flicking uneasily, eyes fixed on the gate. John crouched by him, rubbing the beast’s neck with one hand.

  “You heard her, didn’t you?” he murmured. “Run if something big comes out. Don’t wait for me. Just run.”

  The mule huffed through its nose, a sound far too knowing for a mere animal. John reached into his pack and pulled out a carrot. “Another bribe, then. Payment for services rendered.”

  The mule crunched the carrot happily, tail swishing as if to say, deal struck.

  He sat on a smooth rock near Bristle and unwrapped the bundle Molly had packed. Some bread, smoked meat rich with spice, even a wedge of soft cheese wrapped in cloth. For a moment, the dungeon’s hum faded behind the simple pleasure of eating something real.

  He drank deep from his flask and finally straightened, the dungeon loomed larger, its surface crawling with faint light. He felt its pull like gravity, tugging at the back of his mind. It whispered of strength, of power, of the chance to stop being a man who scraped by on a fancy blade and borrowed buffs.

  He paced before the gate, boots grinding into the scorched earth. The thought kept circling back, this world was only going to get worse. The Ward Wall was failing. Monsters were spilling through. Humanity was on a countdown to ruin.

  If he wanted to survive, he couldn’t afford to let opportunities pass by.

  Yet there was a difference between opportunity and suicide. The dungeon was likely beyond his current skill. Maybe the wiser choice was to wait. And merely watch as the powerful adventurers arrived to claim every scrap of experience and loot for themselves.

  The arch pulsed again, as if daring him to enter. John stared back, half-expecting some endgame boss to come lurching out, jaws agape and eyes like lanterns. Instead, the silence stretched.

  He flexed his grip on Moonfang. Maybe Lia was right. Maybe he should just turn around and wait for higher Ranks to show up and handle it. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be the guy who did the impossible here, not in the flesh, with no respawns, no take-backs.

  But as he stepped away from the shadows, a rasping sound wheeled out from the arch. The cliff face rippled, as though the stone itself was breathing. The blackness coughed up a thing shaped like a spider, but the size of a dog, and with a carapace slick as oil. It skittered onto the stone, mandibles clicking wetly.

  John froze. He’d farmed this monster for loot drops so many times that he could do it in his sleep. Ravine Stalker. Weak to slashing, resistant to fire. Fast, but telegraphed its charge with a rearward shuffle.

  Old Bristle screamed and bolted. Good, he thought, then braced as the thing charged. He let it close, waited for the twitch in its hinge-joint, then rolled right, Moonfang arcing in a precise, practiced cut. The blade hit a joint and bit deep. The spider reeled, leaking a glutinous gray jelly. It spun, jaws wide, and spat a streamer of web at him. John slashed it from the air, then closed in before it could shift aim. Two more strikes and a shriek later, the monster collapsed, legs jackknifed, insides spattering across the rocks.

  He stood above it, panting. The stench was foul, his arms spattered, but he grinned. Too easy. If the dungeon was only spawning these, he could clear at least a few chambers alone.

  That would get a few levels, help stack the odds in his favor. It’d be stupid not to at least scout. The real threats came later, further down, and nobody would thank him for sitting on his ass while the world overflowed with monsters. He wiped the worst of the goo off Moonfang, then stalked forward, nostrils burning.

  “Yolo,” he muttered, and crossed the threshold.