We get up and make our way into the room immediately to our right, only to see another room nearly identical to the first. I say ‘nearly’, because there’s no Spider Bear in this one, nor is there a staircase leading back to the first floor of the dungeon. The walls are perfectly smooth, while the ceilings glow just brightly enough to allow us to see colors tinted in a shade of fluorescent green.

  We split up to check the room. Chloe heads toward where the staircase would be, while I hug the walls, looking for any panels or signs of hidden passageways. I feel nothing, and even with my [Ethersight] scanning for an invisible glyph somewhere, I find nothing. Not even a mundane panel that might give us some clues as to what we might be trying to do.

  Instead we pass through the right-side door and into the next room. This one is different, in that there’s no room leading further right… I have no idea what the absolute cardinal direction is. East, if we assume we started on the south side of the first room and proceeded to the north, but the spiral walkway of the first descent means I can’t tell for sure. Even Chloe’s compass app on her phone is giving her nothing, which I blame on the spatial distortion that makes up this dungeon space.

  However, there is a treasure chest in the back corner of the room. I again can’t discount the possibility of a monster lurking within, so I approach slowly and carefully. Once I get next to it, I turn on my [Ethersight], and immediately start smiling with glee as I open the box of goodies. Five [Ether Canisters] for our trouble. About damn time we got a few restoratives! And maybe, given they aren’t quite identical, there’s enough to go off in terms of figuring out what exactly is necessary to build my own.

  Again no monsters in this room. Considering the unpleasantness that awaited us in the first room, I’m surprised. I would have expected to have seen more of something at this point. Maybe there’s a puzzle involved on this floor?

  We head north by one room. This time, we encounter an eye bat. Or at least, a creature that looks like a bat, has batlike wings, hangs from the ceiling, and has a single giant eyeball in the middle of its soccer ball-sized body. Fortunately, my [Ether Bullets] are sharp, quickened with the glyph of [Impulse], and are an almost perfect weapon against the flying menace. Unfortunately, sclera gets everywhere, including in my hair, and even as the creature disintegrates and the kill notification pops up in my sight, it doesn’t fully dissipate. Gods-damned bats!

  [You have slain an Eyetwitch (Level 15). You have gained a boosted 174 Experience!]

  [Level: 17; Experience: 25,120; To Next: 5]

  [Current Stats: [Health]: 1,149 / 1,274 ; [Ether]: 498 / 741]

  Five points away from the level up. And not a treasure chest in sight. Gods-damned bats indeed.

  We head up one additional room. The air grows warm, a welcome feeling after proceeding through the chills of the dungeon. Chloe’s wand glows slightly, which I interpret to mean the wand is charged and can use its [Fireball] again. Chloe confirms as much. And again, no enemies in this room either. There’s a strange wall that spans the middle third of the room, though it doesn’t really do anything. Just a long, thin column for structural support? I have no idea if it’s load-bearing or not, but it doesn’t really do anything other than force Chloe and I to walk a bit more closely together.

  We end up in a room that looks like a corner room, and things are starting to make a bit more sense. There’s some sort of grid-like system with the rooms. Maybe a five wide by four deep array? Either we have to go through all of them, or go through them in a specific order, or maybe it’s one of those ‘single path caves’ I’ve seen in a couple of video games. Or there’s just a well-hidden switch that leads into the boss room.

  It’s definitely too quiet.

  “What do you think, Sera?” Chloe asks.

  “That something is watching us. There were rats and bugs on the first floor, but this all looks mechanical and polished. Almost like we’re back in the Tower Gauntlet rather than the natural cavern from above.”

  “You think that too.” She says it more as a statement than a question.

  “Someone just strolling in from the outside is going to think of this as just a natural cavern. Maybe a particularly dangerous one, given the creatures that we found there. But something that a person could dismiss as a strange natural phenomenon. But anyone who makes it past Armosi knows that this place isn’t natural, and maybe the dungeon just isn’t taking any further steps to keep the fa?ade going.”

  “You think the dungeon is sentient?”

  “The dungeons, the Tower Gauntlet, the System. Yes, I absolutely do think there is an intelligence behind all of this.”

  “And yet you feel comfortable saying this in the middle of the dungeon?”

  “It’s not like we can do anything but proceed further. Besides, the dungeons want us to explore them. If they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any treasure in them. And they’d put some level 80 monstrosity to guard the gate, rather than letting us inside, then giving us carefully managed challenges that are difficult but overcomeable at our level.”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “So it’s not dangerous?”

  “Oh, it is dangerous. The System rewards us for exploring dangerous areas and fighting strong monsters. Our Skills rank up faster when we’re under distress, and we got boosted Experience for defeating Armosi.”

  “Do you think we can beat the next boss?” Chloe asks.

  “I thought for sure that wouldn’t be the case after we had to deal with the Spider Bear. But that Eyetwitch was a lot weaker, so I’m going to say ‘probably not’ instead of ‘not a chance.’”

  Chloe grabs my right hand with both of hers and pours another forty points of [Ether] into me. I turn to her and look upon her with bemusement, but she only gives me mixed signals and a smile as we head westward into the next room. We’ll definitely have to have a talk about this once we get out of the dungeon.

  Finally, the next room has some monsters. Two more Eyetwitches, each of which goes down as easily as the one from several rooms back. And with that…

  [You have defeated two Lesser Eyetwitch (Level 11, 11). You have gained a boosted 4 Experience.]

  “Son of a gum-chewing funk monster!” I exclaim.

  “Something wrong, Sera?”

  “Chloe, I went from needing 5 Experience to gain my next level, to now needing 1. That’s right, I got 4 lousy, stinking, good-for-nothing points for that battle. Forget my life!”

  “I’m sorry, Sera. I’m sure you’ll get your level up soon enough.”

  “I think this is the System’s way of giving me a bit of mental anguish.”

  “And I think we should open this chest before anyone else gets any ideas of taking what is rightfully ours.”

  I oblige Chloe’s missive and open the chest to find four [Potion of Moderate Healing]. No idea how much ‘moderate’ healing entails, but I’d guess it’s in the four to five hundred range, given the [Potion of Lesser Healing] is good for a bit over a hundred. I take three of them for myself before handing the last one back to Chloe. We stow them away before making our way over to the next room.

  Finally, a new monster in the next room. And oh shit, it’s a massive scorpion, probably a good twenty feet long from head to tail, and three to four feet wide at the widest point of its thorax. It makes a cackling sound like castanets with its two massive claws as its stinger raises high into the air, nearly grazing the ceiling as it does. Worse still, I catch the glint of purple venom upon its stinger as it readies itself for combat.

  I activate [Ethersight] to scan for weaknesses. The joint at the base of the telson is one. The eyes are another. The joints connecting the claws to the cephalothorax. Each individual leg joint.

  I pull out my [Blessed Sword]. I don’t want to fight in close proximity to the beast, but every one of its weaknesses seems far more vulnerable to slashing attacks than to the concussive force of my bullets. I’m also starting to run low on them, and I have a feeling I’ll need them for the boss ahead, should we decide to fight it today.

  Chloe takes a defensive stance behind me as I grip my sword and ready for battle. The creature chitters again, feinting with its right claw before attempting to pierce me with its stinger. I dodge the first strike with ease, then use my [Gauntlets of Repulsion] to knock the second one off course. It lands in the stone floor, and thanks to the curved and barbed stinger tip, it gets stuck for just long enough for me to strike.

  I do good damage, causing acidic blood to spray onto the ground. I don’t have enough strength to get a clean hit through, but at least I have a target for future attacks.

  More divots in the floor form as the sludge eats into the stone beneath, but the floor quickly repairs itself. The scorpion menace pulls its tail out of the stone, staggering backward from the force it exerted. I sheathe my weapon as quickly as I can and pull out my trusty modular blowgun. I aim for the gashing wound I inflicted earlier with a [Repulsion Bullet], using [Trick Shot] to guide it to its mark. The creature tries to defend itself, coiling around and swatting away my attack with its claws. But through a bit of good luck for a change, I manage to guide the attack right between the pincers of its right claw.

  My attack slams into the creature’s tail, tearing its telson and stinger clean off and sending it falling to the ground with a thud. But instead of retreating as I’d hoped, it charges at me with even more aggression, attempting to spray me with its toxic blood that it shoots out of its tail like water out of a faucet. Chloe runs to the far wall where the three doors out of the room are. Meanwhile, I pull up my [Repulsion] barrier to deflect the attack.

  Since the barrier is pure physical force given solid form, the acidic spray deals no splash damage either to me or to it. The room begins to stink, though, and I feel an even stronger version of cutting onions as the fumes start assailing my eyes, nose, mouth, and throat.

  I need to finish the fight quickly… My vision starts to blur as the poisons begin to take effect. Then I get an idea.

  I switch to my [Freezing Bullets] and fire another two shots in close succession. The first one ends up completely missing its mark, but the second connects, freezing the spigot and ending the immediate threat. I decide to press the initiative, pulling my sword back out and swinging with reckless abandon and trusting that Chloe will be able to patch up whatever ugliness befalls me in the meantime.

  The scorpion gets its fair share of hits on me, and I have to fall back once as a particularly nasty gash cuts across the center of my waist. Were it not for the brigandine I put on earlier, it would have disemboweled me for sure, but as it is, I’m only heavily internally bruised. Chloe’s healing continues to be a wondrous panacea, and within the span of ten seconds, I’m patched back up well enough to charge in and finish the fight.

  [You have slain a Lesser Toxic Cave Scorpion (Level 20). You have gained a boosted 3,060 Experience.]

  Lesser? I raise an eyebrow at that.

  [You have gained enough experience to reach level 18. [Vitality] +1, [Mind] +1. Please allocate stat points (Remaining: 3)]

  I decide to allocate them to [Strength], [Speed], and [Mind]. As much as I should be a mid-range supporting fighter like I was with the others, right now, I need to keep us alive, and I’ve got better armor proficiencies and offensive capabilities than Chloe does by a long shot. For that, I need more [Strength] and [Speed] in particular to protect her.

  [Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x2 + Current Level + Rand[1, 3] = 108]

  [Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0, 2] = 76]

  [Level: 18; Experience: 28,184; To Next: 3,176]

  [Current Stats: [Health]: 946 / 1,382 ; [Ether]: 226 / 807]

  [Current Stats: [Strength]: 22; [Speed]: 22; [Vitality]: 44; [Mind]: 56]

  “About gods-damned time,” I mutter as the two of us pause to catch our breath.