After a half hour of everyozing with the gantry e, trying to get it put together a up, followed by everyo me sitting on their asses reading a book or pig their noses for another half hour while I futzed with it myself, I mao get all of ten moves into the thousand-move sequehat'd solve the puzzle a us out of here when Summer had a breakthrough.

  "Hey," Summer said, as I pulled on the blod-tackle s that moved the e slowly along its gantry. "You think that thing could pick up two disks at once?"

  "If they were just normal rocks?" I asked. "Probably, yeah. This is a puzzle with rules, though."

  "Man, fuck the rules," Summer said. "If the rules are real and it won't let you? Fine, whatever. But at least try it."

  "Alright," I said, before setting the smallest disk back do the sed smallest, and carefully setting up the e to try pig up both disks at once. "Let me just... Oh. Holy shit, it's w!"

  "Hell yeah!" Summer crowed.

  "Did something happen?" Faith asked, lifting her book off of her fad sitting back upright.

  "We figured out how to cheat the puzzle," I said, as I reset the puzzle with the e. "Oh, god, I feel like such a jackass, here."

  "Whoa, hang on, whatchu doin'?" Summer asked, watg me undo my progress. "Are you-"

  "It's simple," I said, as I put the smallest disk ba top of the inal stack. "I don't have to move only oo a time. I move as many sto once as I physically lift."

  "Yeah, but... Aren't those stones heavy as shit?"

  "They are, but I don't care," I said, as magicka coalesced at my fiips. "I'm a fug Wizard, and I refuse to let myself be gatekept by a pile of fug rocks."

  With a great effort and outp of magicka, the eack of stones lifted up, and slowly, gcially, drifted across the floor, before finally, I set it down on the endial.

  The door on the far side of the room clicked, unlog and swinging open.

  "There," I said, pnting my hands on my hips. "We were making it way harder on ourselves than we o."

  "I... That..." Summer blinked a few times. "...You do that?!"

  "I'm a Wizard," I repeated, shrugging. "Besides, that whole thing wasn't evey whole tons of rock."

  "I... That... you..."

  "I'm gonna start taking down the e," I said, using a bit more magic to speed along the process of disassembly by unscrewing bolts and the like. "Should be ready to go soon enough."

  "Whoa," Faith muttered.

  "It's a hub room," Summer said.

  The room of Floor 1 was about as big as the first one, but this one seemed to y real puzzle. In the ter of the room, there was a big cirooth stone on the floor, with four thin, chest-high pilrs around its perimeter. The one o us had a line of glowing white light cirg the top, running down the side fag away from the circle and then across the floor to the door leading back to the first room.

  "Yeah?" I said, turning to face Summer. "How so?"

  "Those pilrs are gonna light up when we solve the puzzle ig room," Summer said, pointing at the other three doors oher walls of the hub room. "Ohey're all lit up, that circle's gonna bee the stairs down to the level, I feel it."

  "Iing," Volex said. "You're familiar with the design nguage of dungeons, then?"

  "This one feels pretty game-y, but... Yeah," Summer said, nodding. "Now... Let's see if we get better puzzles with the room. A a preference?"

  "Left hand along the wall solves the maze," I said. "I mean, right hand does the same, but whatever."

  "Left it is, then," Summer said, striding across the floor. ", bitches, let's do this shit!"

  The first room had been a sger hunt, with all sorts of detritus scattered around the room to hide ten bck pearls the size of an eyeball, which got ied into a stone fixture in the ter of the room with a divot for each pearl.

  The sed room had been a sequence of three different children's puzzles- the sliding-tile puzzle, Lights Out, and T Skyline (a puzzle traditionally pyed on a 5x5 grid; each space was a tower of a differe, with 1 being the shortest and 5 the tallest. There was one of each height in each row and n, and along the perimeter were numbers saying how many distinct towers could be seen in that row/n from this point.)- each of which yielded a mirror when solved, whiabled the pletion of a fourth and final puzzle where we had to bounce a ser around obstacles to reach a target.

  Each time we pleted a room, we returo the hub to see another of the pilrs lit up, firming Summer's intuition. I wondered, was her intuition accurate to dungeons in general? Or was The Abyss just hum her?

  The third and hopefully final room of Floor One was bare ay. In the ter of it stood a goblin man- or perhaps a half-goblin, as he was a full foot taller than the usual goblin- wearing a kimono, a kataing at his hip.

  The typical goblin was around three feet tall, and were, to some degree, proportioned like humans who had been magically shrunk down by a linear factor of two or so. Their heads were bigger, almost matg the size of a human head, with big, floppy ears that almost resembled that of a desert fox or a fucked-up housecat, and were poi the end like an elf's. Their limbs were a bit lohan those of the hypothetical half-sized human, and their muscles coiled with supernatural strength that made them capable of the same feats of strength as a human twice their height would be. Their skin pigment was green, much like that of the orcs, but their hair came in every color of the rainbow, for some reason.

  I'd o a traveling goblin mert at a market, who was iiously cheerful and sold me a number of books and scrolls that took me weeks to trah magic. Perhaps it wasn't the most accurate picture, but I'd never known goblins as anything other than a friendly people with a fasating aiful culture.

  Of course, they were a real culture that actually existed, and pretty muo society survives for very long without developing a martial tradition of some sort.

  "...Uhhhh," Summer began, taking a step back.

  "It is no use," the goblin said, shaking his head. "You ress past this point until you defeat me. I promise you, child, that no sting harm will e to you. But if you do not attack me with the io kill... your way ends here."

  " I, uh... appoint a champion, or...?" Summer turned and looked at me, and the sword on my own hip.

  "G'luck out there, Champ," I said, patting her on the back with enough force to shove her forwards, stumbling as she approached the goblin.

  "Draw your on, child," the goblin instructed, as he drew his own.

  ", we don't really have to do this, do we?" Summer pleaded. "Joseph? A little help?"

  "This challenge is for you, Summer," I said. "Remember rofessor Takeda said? You should be able to beat this guy. You've just gotta get over that silly little 'empathy' and 'inhibitions against hurting other people on purpose with deadly ons' nonsense."

  "Joseph..."

  "Enough. Stand and defend yourself," the goblin said, before charging at Summer, who yelped and recoiled.

  As the goblin's sword made tact with Summer, I could see that it didn't actually cut anything. It was a solid illusion, likely giving Summer the feeling that she'd been cut- i.e., pain- but not actually doing any real damage.

  heless... Summer got her ass kicked, and once she was on the floor, moaning in pain, the goblireated to his starting position.

  "Stand, child," the goblin said. "We will do this for as long as it takes for you to succeed."

  I cast a very minor healing spell on Summer, mostly just removing the psyatic pain, and she slowly pushed herself back up.

  "So, the way The Abyss works is pretty fasating," Volex said.

  "Is now really the time?" Summer asked, quietly.

  "It's a grand struct of Occult magic," Volex tinued. "Nothing around us is real, it's all e- illusion-stuff- given the appearance of a Suyle padded dojo, and a goblin samurai."

  "...Uh," Summer began.

  "The goblin isn't real," Volex said. "His sword isn't real. He's just a shadow puppet that exists because the animating intelligence of The Abyss wants you to fight a swordsman and win. So. Fet about how scared you are. Fet about how little you know about fighting with a sword. Just draw steel, grit your teeth, and go wild. Fuck him up, Summer. Do it! Do it!"

  Summer hesitated... but then, finally, drew her sword, and squared her shoulders, taking the sword in both hands. It was a longsword, patterned on an era where sshing swords were still the primary on, but pte armor was beginning to appear on battlefields, and thrusting ons to pierce the gaps were being more desirable. She took a siep forward, falling into a ready stance, and the goblin o her.

  "Begin."

  Summer took Volex's advice, and charged in aggressively, hag away like a madwoman, which the goblin was hard-pressed to defend against. He was good, but not that good, and in the end, aggression won out, and Summer split him in half from shoulder to hip with a single mighty stroke of her bde.

  He smiled at her, and then burst into a cloud of purple smoke, before disappearing without a trace.

  "...Huh," Summer said quietly. "I think I leveled up from that."

  "Let's go check the hub room," I said.

  "Right. Yeah, let's go."

  We all turned around and walked back out into the hub room, to find the st pilr lit up, and a new pilr sitting where the floor-circle had goending all the to the ceiling. The face of the pilr had a pair of regles etched into it, and as roached it, they parted, revealing themselves to be sliding doors, and revealing a room big enough for all six of us to stand side-by-side, with a big ol wood-and-brass treasure chest sitting in the middle of it.

  "Oooh, loot," Summer said, rushing forward and opening the chest. "Sweet! It's a spellbook!"

  "She got over that quickly," Talia remarked quietly.

  "Let's hope she stays that way," I said dryly.

  AnnouDo you want to read the final egg-crag moment and watch this chick hatch at long st? Do you want to read that right now? Well, now you , for the low price of three dolrs! My Patroo read two weeks ahead, and they also get to read exclusive, Patron-only smutty bonus chapters. If you've got the to spare, then toss it in my hat a yourself some prime egg-hatg tent for your troubles!

  As always, if you like Iro and wao keep making it, the best way to do that is to leave a ent, here or on my discord server.

  Also, I'm taking suggestions for publius chapters iween books. The ideas I've currently ge from "The remaining Kings of Hell react to the political upheaval caused by Paimon's death" to "Joseph Iro visits a neighbor and pys dominoes." Anything goes.