Sern and I stepped through the portal onto cold, hard ground.

  The dungeon was much the same, as it had been before. We stood in a larger central room, with several hallways jutting out from it, leading to other, distinct rooms, and hallways. The walls themselves turned up open each other, sprouting stairs that then twisted around one another, blending back into wall, if they didn’t jut out a second time, into the air, mingling with a further web of stairs that defied several basic principles of physics.

  Sern clutched my hands, sticking closer to my side.

  “You’re doing great,” I whispered. “We’ll beat the dungeon before you know it.”

  She gestured, crawling up into my arms.

  “Rest for now,” I said, patting her hair.

  The dungeons were no place for a little girl.

  Once this core was finally gone, I’d take my split of the money and send Sern home, where she wouldn’t have to run any quests.

  Assuming we survived.

  I let out a breath.

  What was I talking about? This dungeon team was the strongest in the history of the first area. We’d be fine.

  Once I’d been inside the dungeon for a couple seconds, Ardenidi stepped through, checking around, then nodding to me.

  {Gauntlet of Stairs}

  [Dungeon Core : Active]

  “This is new,” Ardenidi hissed, glancing at stairs that folded inward then backward around each other. She glanced down, then rammed her heel against the rock floor.

  Loose stone crumbled beneath her, turning black, and dissolving with the stench of monster blood.

  Arendid picked one of the dissolving chunks up, then smashed it with one hand.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  “First area rookies,” she muttered, giving me a look. “A ‘dungeon’ is made from a Core’s residual mana. The stronger the core, the stronger the dungeon.”

  Her next blow shattered the floor, and Ardenidi grinned. “This one won’t be an issue.”

  Sern sniffed once, before clamping both hands over her nose.

  Ardenidi rolled her eyes. “Don’t focus too much of your attention on the girl, Grind. You’ve got a job to do.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Ardenidi kicked smoldering rock toward the red portal, and it jostled.

  {2-Star Dungeon : Gauntlet of Stairs}

  [Dungeon Core: Active]

  [Locked]

  “Locked?” Ardenidi muttered, smacking or kicking the portal several more times.

  {2-Star Dungeon : Gauntlet of Stairs}

  [Dungeon Core: Active]

  [Locked]

  {2-Star Dungeon : Gauntlet of Stairs}

  [Dungeon Core: Active]

  [Locked]

  {2-Star Dungeon : Gauntlet of Stairs}

  [Dungeon Core: Active]

  [Locked]

  There was a pause, then the rest of our team followed through. Evidently, hitting the portal triggered a jostle on both sides, which made it possible to use as a signal, letting the others know that it was safe to enter.

  Between the thirteen of us, the landing area was getting cramped.

  Dexten whistled. “Quite the place, isn’t it?”

  “You guys feel that, don’t you?” Mall asked, with a shiver. “The presence?”

  “It’s a two-star dungeon, girlie,” Throttle chuckled. “It’s not going to feel like a one-star.”

  Ardenidi took the elixir from our stacks of supplies, popped the cork, and emptied the vial on the ground. Upon contact, light erupted forth, dimming into a blurry shape of an intricate pattern, which sunk between the stone, melting away.

  “It’s supposed to do that, right?” I asked.

  Irion nodded. “An elixir is both a one-use ability and a potion that modifies the dungeon’s residual mana, creating a lasting effect. The stronger the dungeon, the stronger the buff. Ideally, we’ll want six or seven regen to get our money’s worth.”

  ~Epic~

  {Regenerative Elixer}

  [Regen XXI]

  Ardenidi’s team all froze, realizing something the rest of us hadn’t.

  The rest of us celebrated, stretching and moving around feeling the electrifying sensation as the effect washed through our skin.

  Finally, Leo took his sword and rammed it blade down into the rock.

  The stone barely chipped.

  Ardenidi hissed. “Something changed.”

  Bruce was the first to realize what was going on, looking back up at the elixir. “Hang on, twenty one is pretty high, right?”

  Irion frowned. “Now that you mention it, yeah.”

  Meanwhile, Ardenidi was striking the ground, once again finding that the stone broke on impact.

  “Irion!” She snapped. “You’ve been to two stars before, yes?”

  “A few,” he said.

  “Enlighten your crew,” Ardenidi started. “Do dungeons have flexible strength?”

  “Flexible?” Irion asked. “Of course not. The dungeon is like a crab's shell. It can’t be manipulated.” He aimed his bow at a distant wall, and, with one shot, pierced an arrow clean through.Then he aimed at the ground, and fired again, with the arrow only sinking an inch or so into the stone. “Different parts of the dungeon can be stronger or weaker, but that strength doesn’t change.”

  “Did you see that?” Dexten asked, stepping forward. He stopped on the ground, eyes closed. Then he did it again. “It’s flinching.”

  Irion scoffed. “Flinching?”

  “When you hurt the dungeon, it flinches—oh just watch, alright?" He fired a barrage of light arrows into the ground. The latter the first struck, the dungeon suddenly hardened, shattering the others. “It’s like with suppressed stats. Give a person a good scare, and you’ll see how strong they really are.”

  Ardenidi pointed to the ground. “Harva. Now.”

  She knelt down, closing her eyes. After only a few seconds, she jolted back, grimacing. “There’s a flow of mana.”

  “So?” Quin grumbled, slumping in a corner, picking his teeth. “We’re fighting the core, not the dungeon.”

  “We’re fighting both, fool,” Ardenidi hissed. “The Core can use magic.”

  She waited a moment, letting that sink in with the rest of us.

  Quin cleared his throat, pointing to Eere. “Like, magic magic?”

  Ardenidi nodded.

  Quin swallowed. “That won’t be an issue, right?”

  “For me, no,” Ardenidi hissed. “For you? Yes. Yes it is.”

  Harva pursed her lips, running her hands back over the dungeon floor. “There’s something moving—wait—oh. The flow of mana just cut off.”

  Leo huffed. “This place is weird.”

  Instantly, the dungeon dimmed down, candles flickering.

  “I’ve seen this before,” I said, watching as lights cut off in the distance. “There’s a room the Core wants us to go to, so he’s controlling the light to push us there.”

  Sern squirmed, still with her hands over her nose, and buried her face in my hair.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered.

  Dexten walked around, sniffing. “Actually, there is a bit of a smell, isn’t there? That’s kind of like…” He wrenched a hunch of rock from the floor and gave it a sniff. Dexten gagged. “Definitely monster mana.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Malicious mana,” Harva whispered, and Eere nodded in agreement. “Grind, the lights, where does the dungeon want us to go?”

  “Actually,...” I tried off, checking my suspicions.

  The furthest candles were dying first, then the ones closer than that. They seemed to be following various paths down through the dungeon, but if you looked at all of them at once…

  The last distant candle flickered out.

  “We’re already here,” I said, glancing at the bright candles around the starting area.

  Harva glanced up, mouth open. “H—”

  She cut off as a dull object rammed against her face, crushing her jaw against the dungeon floor.

  {Harva : (-70) 10 Hp}

  [Neurotoxin III applied (3:00)]

  “HARVA!” Leo screamed, spinning around, staggering. There was a blur, and a sword wrenched under one rib. He ripped it out, but the damage was already done, and he fell.

  {Leo : (-40) 300 Hp}

  [Neurotoxin III applied (3:00)]

  “Grind!” Quin shouted. “A little heads up would’ve been nice!”

  “This is all new!” I shouted back, shovel at the ready.

  Smoke rose from a silhouette of rock, one metallic foot on Harva’s throat.

  Though the dungeon was mostly the same, the Core itself was much, much bigger than when I’d last fought it, easily standing three heads taller than Leo, who already towered over the rest of us.

  The core had changed the texture of his body, replacing much of the stone with molten rock and metal, giving it a smooth coating.

  For a moment, nobody moved.

  Ardenidi kept calm, but sweat was trickling down her forehead.

  She took a step.

  The core squeezed, with a horrible crunch of bone.

  {Harva : (-50) 10 Hp}

  [Neurotoxin III refreshed (3:00)]

  Ardenidi kept still.

  The Core kept its mouth closed, creating a series of clicks from the back of its throat.

  It gestured, the color shifted to a calm ocean blue. It tapped its heel against Harva, then nodded to the portal.

  “Grind?” Ardenidi whispered, calling my attention. “Run.”

  {Ardenidi}

  //1000 Str 997 Hp 250 Mana//

  Energy exploded off her, scorching the air, blowing stone off the floor.

  The Core hissed, mouth splitting open to reveal new mixed metal teeth, thin and bristly.

  The two lunged at each other.

  By that point, I was already running, taking the others with me.

  “What are you doing?!” Throttle shouted, struggling against my grip. “We can fight!”

  “We’d only hold her back!” I snapped.

  Light blossomed in the starting area, hissing as it met the dungeon. Walls began to crumble, then fade as the colors blurred and the rock melted together, patches of energy lighting each step through the dungeon.

  Then the light cut out, and we ran in darkness.

  “GAH!” Quin screamed, cracking his forehead against a wall. “I can’t see a thing!”

  Eere tugged his shirt.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Quin grumbled. He rubbed his face, then squinted around at the dark shapes. “Where are we?”

  The candles flickered back to life.

  There were ten of us, now.

  I dropped to my knees, struggling to catch my breath, though it was more shock than exhaustion. “We’re alive. How are we alive?”

  “Are we safe?” Bruce asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “The other hallways have candles too, see? As far as I can tell, the dungeon isn’t very happy when its Core moves around, so we’ll know pretty quick.”

  Within the ceiling, other twisted passages relit, one after the other, extending into the sky.

  We were alive, if a little battered around.

  Irion lost a shoe somewhere, and Throttle and Quin had bruised heads from running into walls. The rest of us had small cuts and bruises either from tripping or hitting something.

  In total, the rest of the party had maintained minimal damage, and the regen quickly patched anything remotely serious.

  Mall spun around. “Where’s everyone else?”

  A large smoking object crashed through the dungeon wall, dropping to our feet.

  Quin started screaming, smacking the monster over and over with his sword until he heard a rather humanoid grunt.

  Leo sat on the floor, curled up in a ball. He was not particularly happy.

  “Leo!” Quin laughed a little too forcefully. “You’re alive!”

  “Barely,” Leo grumbled, noticing a bunch of thin, shallow cuts across his arms and back. “What happened?”

  “We were going to ask you the same,” I said.

  He glanced down his ribs, which had a silver resin plastered over in a sloppy bandage. “Salve?”

  [Neurotoxin III ~ Cleared]

  [Regen XXI has taken effect]

  The flesh tightened, stitching itself together, swallowing up the salve, until his side was smooth and unbroken. You’d only know he’d been hurt if you looked at the gaping hole in his shirt, which regeneration wasn’t able to fix.

  “Grind!” Throttle cackled, peeking through the broken dungeon walls. “Think you could do that?”

  Leo had been shot headfirst through no less than a hundred dungeon walls, each smoldering with molten rock.

  “That’s got to have been Ardenidi,” Leo grumbled, rubbing the back of his head. He checked the rest of our group, before the color drained from his face, and he checked again, faster. “Where’s Harva?”

  “If you’re alright then she’s probably fine,” I said. “Besides, there’s regeneration in this entire dungeon. It can’t be easy to get someone killed.”

  Leo huffed. “I know that.” He stretched, working feeling back his arms, hands, then legs. “What are you scrubs waiting for? We’re going!”

  Quin cleared his throat. “Actually, Grind is in charge—”

  Leo marched off without another word.

  “Guys?” Quin asked.

  The rest of us were already following.

  Quin whimpered. “You’re not letting that nutjob lead us, are you?”

  Throttle sighed. “He’s strong, right? He’ll know what to do”.

  “Ardenidi sent him here, after all,” Bruce stated.

  “But he’s mean,” Quin mumbled.

  Sern reached from my shoulder, patting Quin on the head.

  Quin scowled back. “This team is dead to me.”

  We ventured through the dungeon, doing our best to ignore any signs of danger, checking for the sounds of monster activity.

  There weren’t any.

  For whatever reason, the dungeon was starkly empty, without so much as a wandering mage or goblin.

  Leo groaned, stomping a foot on the ground. “What is with this dungeon?!”

  “You’ve been on a lot, haven’t you?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you know?”

  Leo muttered to himself, scratching his hair. “This dungeon makes no sense. They have rules!”

  “Like what?”

  “Well they can’t move out of the boss chamber, for a start!” Leo shouted, curling his hands into fists. “That’s—it’s—itdhhtgkkf!---” He screamed, headbutting through a brick wall.

  Irion cleared his throat. “Maybe we should settle down for a moment.”

  Bruce was sketching on the ground, detailing the current areas of the dungeon while Sern and Eere sat beside him, checking his map against their memory.

  “Half the dungeon down and still nothing,” Throttle grumbled. “You said there was loot, Grind!”

  “There’s supposed to be,” I muttered. “I found two rooms last time. The loot was pretty good, I think, and it would've gotten better given all this time.”

  “Well I don’t see anything!” She barked back. “I need treasure!”

  Quin sighed, hands clasped on his lap, staring wistfully up into the foggy dungeon sky. “When I beat this dungeon, I’m going to take my money and buy a yacht.”

  “I don’t think we have any yachts around here,” I stated. “Or seas, really.”

  “A boat would work,” Quin said. “I’m not picky. I just need something to ride far, far away from this place and its stupid monsters.” He glanced at Sern. “No offense.”

  She squinted back.

  “Well, I’m buying stats,” Mall stated, sitting down beside us. “If you get strong enough, then the monsters here won’t be a problem, no matter how strong you get.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Throttle muttered. “But how strong is that?”

  “At least the regional maximum,” Quin grunted, which earned him strange looks from the rest of the group. “The maximum. You’re telling me you haven't noticed nobody has over a thousand in any stat?”

  “I didn’t think much of it,” I admitted.

  “A thousand is the absolute limit, and means that you’ll never be completely free from danger. Not with monsters like this two-star freak running around.” Quin grumbled. “And a thousand is nothing in the second area. You’re better off getting to a couple billion in the second area.”

  “Aren’t the other areas stupidly dangerous?” Mall asked.

  “Oh yeah.” Quin facepalmed. “I hate this game.”

  “Whatever happened to: ‘You hit the goblin. The goblin takes five damage. Then the goblin hits you and then you hit the goblin?’” Throttle grumbled, clasping her hands on her lap and staring wistfully up at the ceiling. “Now that’s real fighting.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a nice, simple fight,” I muttered. “These Cores give me a headache.”

  “Once we win, I’d get a weapon, then a master to teach me to train it,” Throttle stated. “There’s no maximum on skill, and it’s not like you age in the game, so, give me fifty years and I’ll be invincible.” She glanced at me. “Grind? I assume you’ll use your share on stats, right?”

  “I…” I sighed. “There’s some purchases I need to make first. I don’t know how much it’ll cost—”

  Quin groaned. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to buy all the slaves, are you?”

  I huffed, one hand on Sern. “Better than leaving them behind.”

  “You can barely handle one monster, let alone fifty, or a hundred!” Quin snapped. “That’s wildly irresponsible!"

  “Besides,” Mall sighed. “Slaves are everywhere, Grind. It’s an uncomfortable fact of this world. And if you buy all of them, you’re just giving slavers more money, and then they’ll get more slaves, one way or another. It’s better to ignore that system entirely. That way, slavers don’t make money, so their business would eventually die out.”

  She had a point, as much as I hated to admit it. And Quin was right, I couldn’t adopt and care for a hundred children. At least, not in my current state.

  “Then I’ll focus on Sern,” I muttered. “Even if I can’t save everyone, I’ll save her.”

  Quin sighed. “It’s worth a try.”

  Dexten wandered over, meandering around, muttering to himself. Then he looked me in the eye. “What are stairs?”

  “Stairs…?” I glanced at the hallways twisting over our heads. “A set of steps leading from one floor of a building to another, typically inside the building?”

  Mall raised an eyebrow. “Come on Dexten, spit it out.”

  “Its’ got a weakness, right?” Dexten asked. “Everything has at least one. We find that weakness, and this’ll be a piece of cake. Like ice. Stairs hate ice.”

  “People who use stairs hate ice,” Mall clarified.

  “Anybody got better ideas?” Dexten huffed.

  Leo jumped up to his feet. “We’re going.”

  “Now?” Quin gagged. “You sure? We finally got a moment of quiet—”

  Leo walked off without another word.

  “I don’t care what you say, Leo,” Quin grumbled under his breath, curling up on the ground. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’re not coming?” I asked. “You sure you want to stay? Alone? In a dungeon? With a hyper intelligent two-star core who’s probably also a wizard? The one with the needle-teeth?”

  Quin scrambled to his feet, shuddering. “Don’t even get me started on that. Core shouldn’t have teeth if that's what they’ve got to look like.”