Darkness gathered around the party as it descended, settling on them more thickly as they delved deeper.

  Adon checked his memories of everything he had ever heard about dungeons and confirmed that they had levels, each descending further into the ground than the one before it.

  This was partially a distraction from the gloom that seemed to settle around the warriors as they drew further and further from the light of day.

  The butterfly himself could still see everything well enough, despite the relative darkness of their surroundings, thanks to repeated vision upgrades he had purchased prior to his Evolution. For him, the descent was just a bit like moving through a dimly lit room. The shapes of things were still clear and distinct. For the others, though, he could not quite fathom how it was bearable.

  He had already caught several knights about to either trip over a stone or knock into each other, and each time, he had helped avert it with a quick, discreet telepathic warning.

  There had been a couple of falls among people behind him, which was not an area he was watching, but without injuries. The knights in question had just picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and continued as if nothing ever happened, despite the clanging of their armor making that pretense untenable.

  We’re not even at level one yet, Adon thought. How do the humans expect to fight in this lighting?

  As he had that thought, he heard the strike of flint against tinder, and then he saw a spark ignite the first of the humans’ torches. A moment later, that torch had been used to ignite a second, and then both had ignited two more.

  Before Adon knew it, he was surrounded by flames. Dozens of torches, in the hands of almost half of the knights he could see. Suddenly, it was quite warm in the confines of the tunnel.

  Rosslyn groaned quietly.

  I was hoping we could keep the lighting to a minimum to begin with, she thought loudly.

  Adon could not resist that apparent invitation to break the silence that had settled between them since the expedition descended beneath the surface.

  Why? he sent.

  Because once we reach the first level—probably not far from here, unless this is a damned mine shaft instead of a dungeon—the lights will draw denizens of the darkness to us. There are some fishermen, Adon, who specialize in deep sea fishing. They swear by using the brightest and shiniest lures and bait that they can find. Glow worms and such. Because creatures that live in darkness are always drawn to light.

  But don’t you want to kill them anyway? Adon replied.

  Only as many as needed to defeat the dungeon and reach the core, Rosslyn thought. Once that is destroyed, the problem is mostly solved. If we destroy the core, the dungeon does not necessarily cease to exist, but it loses the ability to grow, adapt and generate new monsters. We could just collapse the entrance and roll heavy rocks on top of it, and that would probably solve the problem without needing a full-scale extermination at that point.

  Adon could tell this was actually Rosslyn’s plan, but he couldn’t help but raise further questions.

  Why couldn’t we block up the entrance before? Without going in to fight the monsters, I mean? he sent.

  Because a dungeon core is semi-aware of its surroundings, Rosslyn replied. And even though the monsters will eventually starve to death if they are left to their own devices without the dungeon core, as long as it is alive, it can continue building the dungeon. It would eventually excavate the entrance or even create a new exit.

  Adon thought about that for a moment. He had not truly considered the dungeon core as a sort of living thing before—but he should not have been surprised by the idea. It apparently generated living things, reacted to threats, and posed challenges to those who might try to destroy it.

  Those were just the functions they knew about, through hard-won experience fighting and destroying past dungeon cores. Adon again returned to the memory of his life as one of these monsters.

  What was that intelligence that reached out and made us attack the village with those horned humanoids? he wondered. Was that the dungeon core commanding us? If it was, does it have eyes into the outside world somehow? Otherwise, how would it know where we were going?

  His focus was pulled back to the present as the ground began to level out a bit. It seemed that the party was nearing the first floor of the dungeon.

  Out of all the people here, you have the least reason to be nervous, he told himself.

  Nevertheless, Adon thought that he and the spiders did have a great deal to prove. They needed to show that they could be effective in a fight—or at least Adon felt the thirst to demonstrate that. He glanced over at Goldie and Samson, poised on Frederick and William’s shoulders respectively. Each arachnid appeared poised for battle, ready to jump into action—or possibly it was just a benefit of being a spider that you always looked down for a fight.

  As Adon was anticipating the first level, the party suddenly stepped into a different atmosphere—and he realized that they had arrived.

  He looked around and observed that they were actually in a larger cave than the tunnel down had been, with a high ceiling and craggy rock walls. Everything looked solidly constructed.

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  Then his attention was pulled back to the party by several sounds.

  In front of Adon, metal repeatedly clanked—apparently, the knights’ footsteps grew louder as a result of changing from an earthen surface to stone—while in the distance, something scaly skittered across the ground.

  Adon did not see what moved, though he peered into the deep darkness with eyes that were more effective in this setting than any human’s. Whatever it was had gotten away before he could get a good look.

  But some of the knights heard it and stopped walking, and those behind and to the side of them bumped into the ones who had paused. There was a slightly comical couple of seconds while the knights regained their balance, picked themselves up from the ground in a couple of cases, and composed themselves.

  “Form lines for battle, everyone,” Rosslyn ordered in a cool, clear voice that carried into the darkness. “I did not see what moved, but we are no longer alone in this place.”

  There was a murmur of agreement, and the lines shifted into rows, with weapons at the ready.

  Then the group moved forward into the dungeon, feet moving like clockwork in a measured tempo. Adon felt the aura around the group had changed now. The knights were not exactly nervous, but they were on edge—ready more than afraid, but the mood seemed to teeter on a knife’s edge. These were men and women used to fighting, but fighting in daylight and preferably out in the open. They might have had some training to fight in closer spaces and in the dark, but it was far from their comfort zone. That was the sense the butterfly garnered with his Telepathy.

  This could easily go badly, Adon thought as the group tramped forward, beyond the space to which the sun’s natural light penetrated.

  It was only torchlight that protected them from the darkness now—that, and Rosslyn’s sword. She ignited it with some quiet, muttered incantation that Adon just barely missed. He guessed that this was the family magical affinity that Rosslyn had been keeping hidden, since the sword glowed with a pure white light after that, without giving off any additional heat.

  The group walked for what felt like a long time before there was any further indicia of the dungeon’s actual inhabitants.

  It was something quiet. As they rounded a corner, Adon saw what looked like a reptilian tail pull into a crevice in the wall.

  Oh Goddess, he thought.

  He quickly told Rosslyn, Goldie, and Samson what he had seen.

  If the tail is in the wall, he added, the whole creature is. And if they’re responding to our presence by hiding, there might be monsters all over the place that we just can’t see. Waiting. Maybe waiting until their numbers are enough for an ambush.

  You might be right, Rosslyn thought. But I doubt it. The types of monsters that appear in dungeons vary wildly in intelligence, but the ones with lizard-like features usually have lizard level intelligence. We might be in luck that this is the first floor. If they are all scared off by the light, we can advance a full floor down without suffering any injuries or even needing to engage the enemy. That would be a significant morale victory.

  I cannot imagine creatures willingly allowing you to explore more deeply into their home, if they know, even on an instinctive level, that you are here to destroy it, Goldie transmitted in response. You mentioned that they have “lizard level intelligence.” But how intelligent did you think spiders were before you met me and Samson?

  That chilled the conversation for a minute. Adon had the sense that Rosslyn was genuinely surprised by the question.

  In any case, nothing changes, Samson added after the quiet had grown awkward. It’s not as though you were going to tell your people to lower their guards because the monsters are letting us pass.

  No, Rosslyn replied instantly in her mind. No, I was not.

  The group continued forward and rounded several more corners.

  Then they came upon a much larger cavern, and Adon found himself shouting a telepathic warning.

  Watch out, everyone! There’s a ton of these creatures, all over the far wall!

  The monsters were a sufficient distance away that the torchlight and sword light did not yet carry the full distance. It was likely the butterfly was the only one who could actually make out the shapes in the darkness. Conversely, they did not yet seem to have noticed the party of heavily armed intruders who had entered their space either, despite the fact that the intruders were a significant light source in the dark cavern.

  “Everyone, halt in place and prepare to fight!” Rosslyn barked.

  The group stopped immediately where they were standing, and although they had already had weapons handy, the knights now raised their weapons and began assuming fighting poses of various styles. A few also seemed to be gathering Mana, although Adon gathered through Telepathy that those around them considered this overkill.

  Just some first floor rabble, seemed to be the consensus thought pattern.

  What are we facing, Adon? Rosslyn thought a little nervously, pulling him back to the situation ahead.

  Adon did not have time to be flattered by the fact that beneath that thought, he sensed that she was relieved that he was there with her.

  He surveyed the enemy position and tried to assess what it was that he saw. They were strange, reptilian monsters with what looked to Adon like the size and general body shape of alligators mixed with lizards on steroids—the body shapes were a bit too long and slender for alligators. Their exteriors appeared to be armored with a medley of scales and armor plating.

  Despite their large size, the monsters crawled all over the distant wall, spider-style, clambering over each other and finding purchase on the wall’s surface practically in defiance of gravity.

  They look like a sort of lizard people, Adon replied almost instantly. Although I don’t know if “people” is really the word. Mutant lizards.

  Kobolds, Rosslyn thought. How many are there?

  A thought beneath the surface went something like, Filthy creatures, but Adon was already trying to figure out the answer to Rosslyn’s question, not thinking about that.

  Umm… The kobolds were massed against the wall where Adon had spotted them, and as he watched, they crawled over the wall, back and forth, slipping and climbing over one another, in a strange tangle that seemed to reflect no regard for personal space whatsoever. It made counting very difficult. But there were clearly a lot of the creatures.

  Far more than the number of humans and mystic beasts who had entered this dungeon. Adon did not know how much numbers would mean to the knights, but being outnumbered four to one would surely not be good for their prospects.

  At least around a hundred, Adon finally sent, trying to keep the concern out of his tone.

  Shit. Rosslyn silently cursed.