To distract himself from a possible future featuring magical faeces, Oz wandered the second dungeon room. Behind him, the steady crunch-chomp-squelch of Chops enjoying his “treats” continued on like the world’s most cursed ASMR. Oz frowned. That was definitely an Other thought. It had slipped in under cover of his exhaustion.

  He didn’t begrudge the dog his snack—he’d more than earned it—but that didn’t make listening to it any easier.

  He grabbed a few torches from the first room and lit the brackets on the walls. The fresh sconces were warm to the touch. That was... concerning. It implied the Jackals hadn’t been lying dormant. They’d been waiting.

  The added light helped. His troll and dwarven heritage gave him solid dark vision, but it was all greyscale. Monochrome left out a lot—like bloodstains, or magical auras, or what kind of grime you were stepping in.

  The space was another stone hall, columns down the centre, the same cold style as the first. A long table dominated the room, stacked with books, but there were no chairs.

  “Did the Jackals just—stand here? Waiting?” Oz muttered. The dungeons he knew were crude templates—barely sentient, maybe—but even those had some internal logic.

  He thought back to the mining dungeon outside Greywater. Even that place felt more alive. He’d visited once, back when his school still thought a field trip to a soul-bleeding cave system counted as education. Lava grubs, hauler golems—they all fit the aesthetic. It made sense.

  This room? Sloppy. Like a stage dressed at the last minute.

  There was only one exit: a long corridor ending in a pair of oversized double doors.

  Oz squinted at them, each one quite a bit bigger than his door.

  “Not using the same trick twice then, are we?”

  Other was telling him to look for secrets, but the only things of note were a mural along one wall and the books on the table. Oz avoided the books and hoped they avoided him as well. He turned his attention away from the suspicious books and toward the far wall—a mural stretched across it in glittering tiles.

  The mural covered nearly the entire wall—dozens of glittering tiles laid out like a comic strip in stone and glass.

  The artistic design was interesting. It was a mosaic, the tiny tiles glittering in the torchlight. It held an ancient feel, speaking of a long-dead artisan who had slaved away for hours to capture their story for the ages.

  It was a shame it was on the level of those special assemblies where slogans like ‘Hugs, Not Drugs’ and ‘Wizard’s Snuff—Today you’re glowing, tomorrow you’re exploding’ were thrown at Greywater’s substance issues, to the same effect as battling a forest fire by pissing on it.

  The mural was half cautionary tale and half cult hierarchy.

  The first panel began with a heroic-looking student stood on a podium, all smile and sparkles. Gold tiles for hair, white robes, a literal glow around his head. Subtle.

  Like all ham-fisted warnings, they didn’t wait to hammer home the message, as the second panel showed a sketchy figure offering him a ruby. You could tell he was a wrong ’un by the caricature: hunched back, hood hiding everything but a crooked smile, and finally a glowing ruby embedded in his chest.

  Showing he was not an idiot, the shiny student said no.

  The next few panels showed the pair duelling. Then the shiny student was on a podium below the slimy one, he had lost. This shock was apparently enough for him to lose all sense of self-worth. The next panel depicted the shiny student accepting the crystal, the following showing him eating it, and the next image showing it sitting in his chest.

  The next few images depicted the slide of his academic and personal life, the crystal becoming darker and darker and his form shifting. By the end, the once-hero was hunched and beast-like, just one more Jackal among many. The hooded figure stood tall, his chest crystal now massive, with red veins radiating out to a mob of corrupted students behind him.

  “So this main Jackal guy’s an arsehole then? What am I meant to learn here? Don’t eat crystals, is that what I really need telling?”

  “Is that so difficult to understand, you’d have to be an idiot to...” Oz froze. “Ah Nether take me. Chops, don’t eat that!”

  Oz hurried over as Chops turned his gore-slicked faces toward him. The left head was panting cheerfully, but the right... the right was suspiciously silent.

  An instinct shared by dog owners and parents of toddlers flared in Oz’s chest—something was in that mouth that shouldn’t be.

  “Drop it, Chops.”

  The right head grumbled and looked guilty, but surrendered when Oz grabbed his muzzle. With a reluctant ptooey, it spat a chunk of black crystal onto the stone floor. It landed with a wet splat in the middle of the viscera.

  Oz stared. Chops looked up at him with what could only be described as a mask of exaggerated guilt.

  “Yeah, you know that wasn’t food,” Oz muttered. He sighed and scratched behind one of the ears until the tail started wagging again.

  Of course, now his hand was covered in blood. Swearing under his breath, Oz stalked over to one of the less-mutilated corpses and wiped his hand clean on the dropout’s ruined uniform. Then he walked back and gingerly picked up the crystal.

  “What is this?”

  He turned it over in his hand, trying to make sense of it. He knew people got really into dungeon delves—his school had three clubs for it: the Junior Delvers, the Delver Fans, and the Commentator Club. He’d absorbed a lot just by being in the same building, but it had never held much appeal.

  His path—the path of the Ranger—was all about outside work. Forests, ruins, survivalism. Not this.

  Besides, delving and dungeon management was one of the few things his mother had ever been really against. Said it was part of an oppressive regime that crippled independent thought and development.

  His mum used to say a lot of things like that though. And that was back when she still thought he’d become an artist.

  Given what little he knew, this had to be something. A clue? A puzzle piece? Maybe even a token—yeah, that was the word. Some dungeons made you collect a bunch of them to move forward, didn’t they?

  “I have no idea what to do with you.” Oz scowled at the ruby, and when that failed to intimidate it into giving up its secrets, he sat back, leaning on the table of books.

  Another pile of things he didn’t understand.

  Oz’s shoulders slumped. He was not made for dungeons. He looked at the mural again and memorised what he could, but it didn’t really tell him anything other than ‘crystal bad’.

  The only thing that stood out was the number—seventeen Jackals. Three of which were noticeably bigger than the rest. They were all bunched around the tall, crystal-chested boss figure. The layout wasn’t symmetrical, and that tugged at something long-buried in him—an artistic itch that hadn’t stirred in years.

  “Chops!” His musing was interrupted by the sound of a dog trying to eat something quietly, a sound that draws attention far quicker than if they just wolf it down.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  A grisly half hour later and he had eight crystals, and an annoyed dog.

  Chops really, really wanted to eat the crystals. But Oz wasn’t about to let that happen. He’d stuffed them into a makeshift bag of scavenged Jackal cloth and found himself right back where he started—having to make a decision without enough information.

  He’d got his axe back, and the door was still in good nick. He looked at the mural. If he was right, then he’d already killed the majority of the enemies, but that didn’t answer what he was meant to do with all the crystals.

  Oz decided to think about that more when he had more crystals. Maybe there was another room with crystal slots or something. He’d decided to ignore the double doors—something about them said ‘boss room’ to him. He might not know much about dungeons, but he didn’t fancy just wandering in on the boss by accident.

  Time to push on.

  Oz was back in the first room by the second door. This one he opened carefully, hiding behind his “shield”. The flame trap that had spat fire at him was fresh in his memory. His gut had told him the door would be trapped, and he was pleased to have been able to counter it. Years of his father’s teaching had given him a sixth sense for such things.

  He moved forward carefully, using a spear to test the floor, listening for pitfalls, checking for switches and tripwires.

  Oz shuffled along, finding the door led to a plain stone corridor with three doors leading off it—one on the left, one on the right, and one at the end.

  Other tried to help, nudging him with jumbled memories of dungeons that felt suspiciously relaxed. No panic. No blood. Just... dice? Oz grimaced. Not helpful.

  After some indecision, Oz started with the left door and, after a quick trap check, opened it. Inside was what looked like an old storeroom—narrow, unlit, dust-caked. With the dim torchlight and his dark vision, Oz could make out rows of empty shelves stretching into the gloom.

  They all but were empty, with only a handful of random pieces of debris strewn about: a broken ink well, a battered satchel, a stack of mouldy paper, and lastly, a chest sitting amongst the dust at the far end of the room.

  “Totally not suspicious.” He could feel Other screaming at him not to touch it. Even Chops began growling. Everything about the chest was... wrong. The design didn’t fit, and it was too clean. Chops had even stopped staring at the bag of crystals to growl at it.

  Was that a sign? Could this be a clue?

  “You know what, you can keep your clues. I don’t need whatever this is.” He was about to close the door when he noticed the satchel again. It looked scuffed and in need of some wax but was still whole and serviceable.

  That could also be a clue, even if it wasn't it'd be better than the makeshift bandoliers he was using to carry his stuff. With some time, the spear, and lots of muttered cursing, he hooked the bag strap and pulled it towards him. It was difficult to move, and it was only when he grabbed it that he realised there was something inside.

  Looking it over, the leather satchel was good—ink-stained and beat to hell—but solid. It looked a few decades out of date in style.

  That wasn’t a guess. The book inside was long overdue. The library card tucked in the front cover, its due date a dusty relic from long before Oz was anything but a glint in his father’s eye.

  The title? Metaphysical Interconnectedness: A Rebuttal to Linear Alter-Sim Theory.

  Oz stared at it like it might sprout legs. “Please don’t be a clue,” he muttered. “I’m not even gonna pretend I understand what half those words mean.”

  He did note the name on the library card: Molmest Cockwarren.

  Not because it was helpful. Just because it was awful. Oz wasn’t a bully—just deeply violent—but even he had to admit: that was the kind of name that invited insult.

  With a sigh, he shoved the overdue book into his rough bag of crystals alongside his axe. As he moved to close the door, his eyes drifted back to the chest at the far end of the room.

  He watched.

  “By the Nether, don’t let the solution to all this be inside that.” He glared at the chest again, before shutting the door, retrieving a torch, and after giving the room one last look, hurled the torch at the chest.

  It split open.

  Not the lid. The whole chest.

  The surface of the thing broke apart into four parts, revealing a maw that caught the torch mid-air and started to chew. Rows of serrated teeth churned around a swirling vortex of purple flesh, dragging the shredded wood into a pitch-black void that even Oz’s prodigious dark vision could not pierce.

  Quietly—very quietly—Oz shut the door.

  Then, for good measure, he grabbed a sword from the weapons rack and spiked the door shut.

  “That’s the kind of thing you collapse a mine on,” he said. Chops huffed in solidarity. The Other helpfully labelled it a 'mimic', and Oz felt that was far too friendly a name for something that looked like it ate abomination's as an appetizer.

  The next door he wanted to explore was on the right. Or would have been—if it didn’t require a key.

  He’d already looted the other bodies pretty thoroughly. If there was a key, he hadn’t missed it. Oz frowned glaring at Chops. He wouldn't have eaten a key would he? Desperate to avoid that line of questioning he briefly explored the idea of doing something with the crystals to open the door. The damn things had to be useful for something. Filing that away as a backup plan, he turned to the last option.

  This last door looked like the others, a little wider and ornate. Decorated with animals round the frame but still with that oak planks and metal studs vibe. He approached it with care, checking for traps—and this time he spotted something. Something familiar.

  Oz’s eyes narrowed. Hidden in the design, behind a squatting eagle-shaped grotesque, were proper dwarven runes.

  Not just decorative. He’d bet his beard these were functional—three of them, carefully chiselled into the stone lintel: Motion, Change, and Resonance.

  He traced their lines with a finger. This wasn’t just decoration. This was a trigger network.

  He examined them again. The designs were pure dwarvish standard with no customisation, each rune sitting in a hexagonal tile. The rune themselves were a series of simple straight lines, each made from a carefully angled combination of standardised cuts.

  For once, his dad’s full-on magical paranoia was a boon.

  Oz had grown up under a man who once warded the toilet seat against casual use. He’d learned to spot them young, and fast. He’d even studied with Mr Goddley to hone the skill in some of the only voluntary extra work he’d ever done at school.

  “Alright, you crystal-eating idiots,” he muttered. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”

  Oz’s mind shifted into a different gear. He got Runes. Runes weren’t a chore like everything else—they made sense. Shaped by his will, bound by ancient designs, and organised in Primes. For reasons still debated, Runes worked best in collections of prime numbers. Each Prime was part of a system, combining concepts to achieve a greater effect.

  It wasn’t just about knowing the Rune for Motion. It was about picturing exactly what you wanted that Rune to pull on, how it should flow, how it should interact with the others in its Prime.

  Unlike economics, history, or whatever pointless subject they forced on him at school, Runes were honest. If you understood them, they worked. If you didn’t, they failed. No lectures. No busywork. Just proof.

  Runes demanded patience. Silence. When you worked with them, people left you alone. And in that solitude, his mind was clear—filled only with the system he was building.

  The rune line curved through the doorway—classic dwarven trap design. This trinity served as a tripwire. If he opened the door without disabling it, something on the other side would activate. The question was what, and how.

  The safest way would be to sever the link between this Prime and whatever waited beyond. But his dad had always said, “Never assume the other trapper’s as incompetent as you’d like.” Most decent trap networks had redundancy—fail-safes that checked for tampering. Cut the line, and you might just set off the trap early.

  He could disarm something like this with eyes closed, literally. Runes were a very tactile experience. One factor that marked a rune’s effectiveness was its permanence relative to the object inscribed. There wasn’t much more permanent than hacking deep cuts into stone.

  These were standard dwarven craft. Old school. No frills. But their placement told a story.

  Motion and Change were classic input triggers—likely tied to the door’s movement. But Resonance? That was the lynchpin. It would be the signal carrier—sending a magical pulse to another Prime the moment the door was disturbed.

  “Disrupt the resonance,” he muttered, “and the whole link breaks cleanly.”

  He considered magical backlash, hidden redundancies. Normally he’d use his runed tools to check for magic flows and hidden connections—but he didn’t have those. Still, the layout gave him confidence. No backup traces, no reinforcement glyphs. Just some functional geometry.

  Oz pulled tools from the rack: a warhammer and a belt knife. Makeshift mallet and chisel. He stacked a few weapons into a crude step-stool, climbed up, and braced himself against the frame.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The knife tip bit into the rune. He carved through the central line of Resonance—breaking its form and fouling the rune. The chisel skipped slightly. A soft vibration passed through the stone, like a breath being released.

  He paused, letting the power bleed off naturally. No hum, no spark, no explosion.

  So far, so good.

  Oz dropped back down and patted Chops on the head, waiting another minute just in case. Then, with a deep breath, he put a hand on the door.

  “Okay. Let’s see what you’re guarding.”

  And pushed forward.