I wonder if I’m right, Lily thought to herself as she lightly tapped the button, causing the runes that circled it to activate one by one, all of a sudden. “Whoa, they’re so shiny!” The spider promptly turned toward her friend. “So… it’s fine, right?”

  Nari slowly nodded, then raised her sights toward the ceiling. “Give it a moment,” she whispered.

  Once all the runes shone together, the chandelier lit up like magic, finally allowing them to see without trouble, especially Nari, who couldn’t stop herself from cheering the moment she noticed two beds, almost as if they had been placed there for them.

  “What kind of magic was that?” the spider wondered.

  Before answering her question, the girl jumped straight on the bed, letting out a deep breath the moment her body landed on the bouncy surface. “Well…” Nari sat up. “Actually, those were Energy Runes, and judging by how well they worked, whoever made them had a lot of mastery in placing them,” she explained.

  Lily only looked at her with her mouth wide open, not uttering one single word.

  She paused for a moment, then sat up, staring back at the spider, totally unaware of why she had that expression plastered over her face. “Why are you looking at me like that—”

  “What if it were a trap or something and lots of spikes shot up from that mattress like in horror movies?!” she yelled in a single breath, so fast that some of the words mushed together.

  “Kyaaa!!! What the hell are these movies you keep talking about todayyy?!?!” Nari hastily jumped off the bed and landed on her butt. “Ouch, ouch, ooouch!!!” she shouted. “I totally spaced out for a second and forgot we’re in a dungeon…”

  Lily couldn’t stop herself from bursting into a laugh as she watched her friend freak out on the floor. “Anyway, seems like we’re safe in here, and I don’t see any weird statue,” she said, focusing on the vibrations around herself, not feeling anyone else other than the two of them.

  “You scared me for nothing!” the human rebutted, pouting her lips. “Buuut, I just had a crazy thought…” She hesitated for a moment. “What if we slept here for a couple of hours? That bed was sooo comfy!”

  “Actually, it’s a great idea.” Surprisingly enough, the spider was more than willing to go along with the idea, not only because she was trying to test a theory but also because they had been in that room long enough that the monsters following them would have already reached them if they could.

  Nari stood up and jumped back onto the bed, giggling while bouncing on it a couple of times. “Whoa! The pillow is amazing.” She smiled from ear to ear as she buried her face in the soft, cool material, feeling it against her warmed-up face. “I could fall asleep just like this.” The fabric totally muffled her voice.

  She wasn’t exaggerating; it really is incredibly soft, Lily thought to herself after following Nari’s lead and jumping on the other bed. In fact, it was so comfortable that she almost fell asleep the moment she lay down, but was promptly interrupted by her friend, who dangled a sandwich right in front of her face.

  “First, you gotta eat something, I’m not letting you go to bed with a growling stomach,” Nari told her, basically demanding that she eat. “We should have enough left for tomorrow as well.”

  “Okay, sure,” Lily agreed. “But I don’t think we have to worry about food for much longer,” she added, piquing the girl’s interest.

  “Huh? What do you mean?” she wondered, taking a big bite of the new sandwich she summoned from her inventory.

  “I might have figured out the second trick,” Lily replied, shoving the whole panini inside of her mouth and swallowing it whole, like a monster—which she was, to be fair.

  Nari’s eyes lit up on the spot, and she inched closer toward the little spider, waiting impatiently for her to speak. “Sooo?!”

  “Keep in mind that I could be wrong. I’m not sure yet…” Lily mumbled under her breath. “Let me explain.” Lily took a deep breath. “The first time we walked through, I went in first, and for most of the time we’ve been in here, I’ve thought about finding a treasure or something.” She smiled awkwardly. “You know, cause we’re in a legendary dungeon.”

  “I… ugh, sure?” Nari crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow. “Go on…”

  “The second time, you went in first, and you were pretty pissed after all the items disappeared,” the spider reminded her.

  “Yeah, I wanted to punch something,” the girl admitted.

  “And the dungeon gave you exactly that, if in a weird way,” Lily replied.

  “I don’t get it…” Nari tilted her head to the side, tone quite confused.

  “As for the third time… you launched me like a ball, which by the way, you’re much stronger than you look,” she mumbled under her breath, basically whispering the last part. “We both only wanted to get to safety, and,” Lily raised her forelimbs, “behold, here we are.”

  Nari just stared at the spider, her head tilted even further, enough to fall off the bed if she kept going the same direction.

  “What if that weird hallway we went in at the balcony just gives its explorers the thing they think they need, or want, I guess… the most, the moment they walk through the light?” the spider said. “It would certainly explain why it never leads back to the same spot—”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “You might be a genius,” Nari interrupted her.

  “No, what? That’s not true!” Though it looked impossible, the little spider was actually blushing up.

  “I’m serious! I would have never thought about that,” the girl admitted. “I bet you were really smart in your previous life,” she added, clapping excitedly for her friend, yet Lily’s smile slowly faded away.

  My previous life, huh? If only I could remember, the spider thought. “Yeah, maybe…” But her smile returned the moment Nari offered her an even bigger sandwich, which she needed two bites to finish.

  “Wait a second, if your theory is right, then maybe we could leave the dungeon right now!!!” Nari jumped up in a standing position, ready to move toward the hallway. “What are we waiting for?”

  “That’s a big if, though,” Lily rebutted, stopping the girl in her tracks. “It’s best if we just sleep and replenish our energies, just to be ready in case something happens in the next room,” she suggested.

  “O-okay, I guess…” The girl sat back on the bed. “Why do I feel like you’re not telling me something?”

  “I have another theory, but it’s more far-fetched.” The spider looked away.

  “I’m listening,” Nari replied, lying down in the bed as she waited for an answer.

  “We haven’t gone through the hallway enough times, but I think I’m seeing a pattern,” she explained. “So far, we’ve fought the statues before walking through the light, then the treasure room was safe,” she said. “The room after that was dangerous again, while this one—”

  “This one is safe,” Nari blurted out. “Are you saying that the next time we’re gonna go through that stupid hallway, we’ll be in danger?”

  “Maybe… I’m not sure, but the clues so far led me to believe that, yeah,” the spider nodded, still looking away. “And if this really is just another riddle, or trick, or whatever… and we’ve figured out the answer, maybe the dungeon’s gonna pit us against something powerful to stop us.”

  The human girl gulped loudly, then cleared her voice. “In that case, we’ll destroy anyone and anything that stands in our way!!!”

  “Yeah,” Lily forced a smile. “Unless we end up against the strongest creature in here…”

  Nari gasped. “No!!! I refuse to think so negatively. We gotta stay hopeful.”

  “You’re right,” the spider smiled, this time genuinely. Yeah, Lily had the bad habit of sometimes only looking at the negative. But with Nari’s upbeat, bright attitude, it was just impossible to focus only on the possible bad outcomes. “I’m getting quite sleepy, to be honest.”

  The human yawned loudly. “I wonder how long we’ve been in here,” she muttered, her eyes already half-closed. “Kinda tricky to tell time without the crystals.”

  “Even with those, it’s weird,” Lily rebutted. “You know, back in my world, we had a way of telling the exact time at any given moment.”

  “Oh, we can do that here too; we have an item called a watch,” Nari explained. “It’s like a little bracelet that goes around your arm, and with a Time Rune it can tell—”

  “HUH? A watch?” Lily was flabbergasted.

  “Yeah, it was invented a couple of—I mean… more than a hundred years ago,” she said. “It's just that it’s less reliable underground, so nobody uses them in The Unending Labyrinth, relying instead on the crystals to approximate time. But out on the surface, it works perfectly.”

  “I know what a watch is,” the spider rebutted. “I’m just surprised that you also know about it… I guess this world is even more similar than I thought, just in a more magical way.”

  “Who knows how many more similar things you’ll find here?” Nari smiled as she got under the covers, trying to find the most comfortable position. “I can’t wait for you to see Dunkel, it’s so—” She yawned again, “pretty.”

  “Yeah, that’s really exciting!” Lily agreed, not only because of the echoes she heard the first time talking about it, but also because she had yet to see an actual city in this new world. “By the way, I almost forgot, how did you manage to stall the monsters in the shadows earlier and escape? I saw that you had—” A loud snore suddenly interrupted her, making her giggle. She must have been exhausted, Lily thought. “Sleep well.”

  Though they were in a safe spot—at least from the looks of it—the spider had a bit of trouble falling asleep. She just couldn’t stop imagining the next room, wondering if her theories were correct, knowing she would soon have an answer.

  Still, a moment earlier, she had been imagining finding the exit and stepping through a portal; the next, she was snoring loudly, just like her friend in the other bed. At the end of the day, the two girls weren’t that different, except for the minor—not really that minor—detail that one of them was a spider.

  “Lily?” Nari whispered, tapping her cheek ever so slightly. “Pssst… Lily, wake up.” She kept poking her, adding a little pressure each time.

  The night had passed by without surprises, allowing them to rest almost as if they weren’t stuck in a legendary dungeon that could turn into a tragedy in the blink of an eye.

  “Hmmm…” Lily muttered under her breath, shifting her archanid body toward the other side.

  “Heeey, come on!” Nari slightly raised her voice.

  “F-five more… minutes…” The spider opened one of her eight eyes for a brief moment, then immediately went back to snoring nonchalantly.

  “Lily!!!” She pushed her toward the edge of the single bed.

  “Annie, stoppp…” Lily mumbled again, blissfully unaware. “I’m a-awake… yeah…” She snored yet again.

  “Annie?” Nari furrowed her brows. “WAKE UP!!!” she shouted, frantically shaking the little spider with all of the strength she could muster up. “We gotta GOOO! Something’s happening!!!”

  “AAAh!!!” Lily jumped up so high that she reached the ceiling and stuck to it. “W-what the hell?” She hastily looked around, only to find a half-amused, half-worried Nari looking at her from below. “You scared the crap out of—”

  “Come down, there’s something weird happening!” Nari cut her off, nudging Lily to follow her right behind the corner.

  “Huh?” The spider promptly jumped down and walked toward her friend, bumping into her the moment she turned around the corner. “What’s going—” She stopped when she noticed the girl pointing toward the hallway they had come from.

  After a brief moment of silence, Nari finally spoke up. “Am I just imagining things, or is the light fading away?”