Matthew always wished to try out rock climbing one day, but today convinced him that he really disliked it.

  Creating holes in the pit’s wall and using them to ascend his way up to the top proved long, tiresome, and just plain exhausting. Even using the Peak spell to stay in shape left him halfway winded after finally reaching the top. Not to mention the vertigo overtaking him whenever he dared to look down at the spiky bottom below.

  At least Kari appeared happier. “Phew,” she said after grabbing Matthew’s arm and pulling him out of the pit. “Nothing better than exercise to get the blood pumping.”

  “Somebody carry me,” Matthew complained. His hands trembled from the strain of carrying his beautiful artist body up a mountain. “Look at my noodle arms! It’s like I’ve caught Parkinson’s!”

  “I’m not carrying you, Matthew. You really need more physical activity and to get in better shape.” Kari checked the room around them, her expression swiftly twisting into a scowl. “And somehow this place has become even creepier.”

  Matthew kind of agreed. The pit opened up into a large crypt cloaked in shifting shadows and supported by shining seashell columns providing a measure of light. An archway led into a hallway to the north, while a Cthulhu-shaped stone fountain poured a thick dark red liquid into a honeycomb pool. Matthew’s Doom Sense failed to trigger, so it looked safe enough to drink.

  “Is it…” Kari gulped. “Blood?”

  “It smells like wine,” Matthew replied before taking a sip, much to Kari’s disgust. It tasted surprisingly good, salty with a fruity aroma. “Definitively wine.”

  “Ew, I don’t know what’s worse, your underage drinking or the fact you tasted stuff from a Dungeon.” Kari sighed before checking the only exit. “Do you think you could blow open a way to the core? Just checking.”

  “Couldn’t reach it yet even if I wanted to,” Matthew replied. “A Dungeon’s levels act as separate pocket dimensions. Opening holes in walls won’t lead us anywhere close to the next one unless we stumble upon a portal.”

  Multi-level Dungeons rarely took less than a day to clear. Doorways to other floors didn’t produce a strong Flux signature like cores, so finding them was a matter of simple exploration.

  “I could create a shortcut to reach John and the Doc quicker, but it’ll cost me a lot of Flux,” Matthew informed Kari.

  “Best to pace ourselves for now,” she said. “I don’t want to be thrown into another pit while Flux-starved.”

  The two of them walked out of the fountain chamber and into corridors so dark that Matthew couldn’t see any farther than his own hand. Kari, whose Key-enhanced visual perception allowed her to find her way around just fine, grabbed him by the wrist to guide him. He felt like a toddler being led around by his mother.

  “Is your Doom Sense triggering yet?” Kari whispered under her breath.

  “Nope,” Matthew replied. He didn’t sense a whiff of a trap. “The Dungeon spent an ungodly amount of Flux to create a new level so fast. It’s likely short on resources to manifest traps and monsters.”

  “For now,” Kari replied, and Matthew didn’t have the heart to complain. “There’s light ahead of us.”

  Though Matthew couldn’t see anything, he trusted his teammate and went along quietly. His Doom Sense began to buzz lightly a few steps afterward. “I sense danger. Nothing too strong though.”

  Kari’s grip on him tightened slightly and he heard the sound of her rapier’s edge sharpened on a wall. Faint yellow candlelight appeared in the distance and eventually led them into a chamber illuminated by four candelabras. The domed ceiling showed a mosaic of the night sky. Four stone coffins lay on the floor, each one located next to a set of archways.

  A squid-headed priest sat there in front of a strange stone altar, its squamous hands joined together in a parody of prayer. It let out a screech the moment it sensed the Crawlers’ presence and pulled out a bloody dagger from underneath its black garb.

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  Matthew let go of Kari’s hand and raised his fingers to shoot it dead, but his teammate proved quicker. Kari closed the distance between the priest and them in a flash, then skewered the monster’s neck before it could react. She turned her rapier with such strength that the squid’s head went flying off his shoulders and crashed against the altar.

  However, Matthew’s Doom Sense didn’t stop in the slightest. Quickly guessing where the danger came from, he swiftly blasted the nearest coffin. The lid immediately grew teeth right as Matthew’s power blew a hole in its center, killing the creature. With the element of surprise lost, two of the other coffins immediately snapped open, revealing jaws filled with gnarly fangs and tentacles.

  Coffin mimics, huh? Matthew never encountered those before.

  Both creatures clumsily hopped at Kari in an attempt to flank her from two sides, but she easily dodged them with an elegant backflip. Matthew nailed one of the mimics with two finger guns and riddled it with holes until it died. As for Kari, she jumped on a coffin’s head—the sudden pressure of her weight slamming it shut—and then stabbed it in multiple places with her rapier. Her power let her detect weak spots Matthew’s eye couldn’t see, and each blow caused the monster to leak thick black blood until it finally expired.

  A single coffin remained amidst the mimic corpses. Since Matthew’s Doom Sense was no longer triggering, he bothered to open it with his Key ability. It contained a handful of bejeweled silver figurines of tentacled angels, much to his delight.

  “Was that priest praying?” Kari wondered upon checking the altar. A creepy statue of an eldritch monstrosity made up of six wings folded around a gigantic central eye overshadowed it. “Can monsters worship a god?”

  “I dunno,” Matthew replied after stuffing the figurines into his bag for future sales. Dungeons seemed strangely obsessed with copying and twisting human concepts. “Imagine their theological debates though.” He coughed and then did his best to mimic an eldritch fundamentalist. “Hey, infidel squid, you represented Lord Cthulhu with four tentacles instead of six! May someone waterboard this heretic!”

  Even Kari couldn’t resist playing along. “Do you think octopi worship a different god than the squids?”

  “Nobody ever expects the Squid Sklux Sklan.” Matthew scoffed. “Do you think they fondle fish children?”

  “And now you’ve made it awkward.” Kari continued to stare at the altar with curiosity. She couldn’t get the image of a monster praying out of her head. “I suppose even these abominations need something to believe in. It makes you wonder about the meaning of life.”

  Believe? Matthew wasn’t certain that monsters could believe in anything, since they were an extension of the Dungeon that created them. Then again, he already knew of one that could think… and how that turned out.

  The very thought made Matthew uncomfortable, so he immediately tried to change the subject. “I already know why I was born.”

  Kari raised an eyebrow in his direction. “And what’s the reason?”

  “Mom and Dad really wanted to have sex.”

  Kari stared at him in disbelief, her mind unable to process the simple answer to life’s greatest mystery. When it finally occurred to her that it probably applied to her own existence, she covered her mouth in horror, tears of despair forming in her eyes. “Oh my gosh.”

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” Matthew asked. “The goal of philosophy is to get laid. Amorem feci, ergo sum.”

  “Ego sum cincta fatuis,” Kari replied with a sigh.

  Matthew had the distinct intuition that she made him the butt of a joke, but he didn’t know enough Latin to understand it. “What does that mean?”

  “Google it up,” Kari replied. “Can you cast a Pulse to advertise our position?”

  “Sure, princess.” Matthew sent a signal and almost immediately received an answer from the Doc. He and John had moved closer to their northwest. He wondered if they took a detour to avoid an obstacle or to rescue a hostage.

  The Dungeon shuddered in response. Matthew sensed currents of Yellow and Violet Flux coursing through the crypt before the monsters’ corpses vanished in a swirling cloud of particles. Although it cost Flux to reabsorb their remains instead of slowly digesting them, the Dungeon probably extracted a positive surplus in return.

  “Do you feel that, Matt?” Kari asked with a worried frown. “It’s summoning a big one.”

  The Dungeon Wreckers Association classified monsters in four categories: Critters, the most common and no more dangerous than wild animals like bears and tigers; Mooks, who were more powerful than any human but still slightly weaker than the average Crawler; Bosses, large monsters who could match a Crawler’s team in battle; and the Raids, exceptionally dangerous entities who required a large group to defeat. The stronger the monster, the greater its Flux cost for a Dungeon. Hence most stuck to summoning Critters to hunt normal humans trapped within their confines.

  And when confronted with Crawlers who could mow down lesser creatures by the dozens, a Dungeon usually switched from quantity to quality.

  Whatever this one was summoning now seemed huge; ‘putting all its alien eggs into one hungry basket’ kind of huge.

  The Flux gathered a few rooms ahead, and tremors immediately spread through the crypt and beyond. The sound of heavy impacts echoed across the level. The Dungeon’s new monster was fighting somebody.

  “I don’t understand,” Matthew whispered in confusion. “The Doc and John should be too far away. What is it attacking?”

  “The intruder,” Kari guessed.

  Matthew’s heart skipped a beat. He focused on the ambient Flux in the vicinity. The newly summoned monster was like a bright purple star in a sea of light, trying to drown a familiar surge of wild Orange.

  Maggie.

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