"What is the Dungeon Core?"

  Ara, Elnor, and Twil all looked carefully at one another before Ara responded. "The Dungeon Core is an object of legends. It is mentioned in two stories, oed roughly six hundred years ago, and the other more than two thousand. It is, acc to the tales, the very essence of the dungeon. In the older of the two tales, it was discovered by a party of eight adventurers, who were the stro people alive at the time.

  "Those eight adventurers fought through the dungeon, which they called the Labyrinth, until they reached the boss on floor 50. When they had defeated it, the dungeon opened a way forward, as it had for the st 49 floors, except it didn't take them to a new floor. They found themselves in a barren chamber with a glowing white orb floating in the middle of the room.

  "The orb spoke to them, and gratuted them on reag the end of the dungeon. It offered them the ce to bee the very first avatars on Glitnir. Seven of them accepted, being the avatars of Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, and Ares. The eighth, a woman named Elnor Rosewood, rejected the Core's offer, and chose to instead bee the first member of the third sex."

  Shiloh g Elnor, who nodded solemnly. "My parents named me after her when I was born." She looked at Ara, and motioned for her to tinue.

  "From that point forward, the gods would choose champions to be their avatars on Glitnir, entrusting them with a mission and supp them in pleting it. Oftehese mortals would end up fighting one another in holy wars, as the gods rarely have goals that cide with each other."

  "So there might be other avatars out there who want to stop me from reag the bottom of the dungeon?" Shiloh asked, wrowing in his stomach. At this question, the other three gave him looks of worry, awe, and fear.

  "I-is that hrodite has tasked you with?" Elnor's voice trembled ever so slightly.

  "Well, yeah. She called it the Labyrinth, though, like the advewo thousand years ago."

  Twil examined him carefully while Ara's gaze hardened into steel. It was Elnor, though, who replied.

  "Shiloh, we never inteo delve that far into the dungeon. The risk rises expoially the further down you go, and the three of us only became adveo earn . It's difficult for people like us to find work, with the stigma that es with ender, but the dungeo care. It old for anyone who is willing to take the risk."

  Shiloh's heart fractured. It was like he could literally feel it stop beating and begin to crumble, and it terrified him.

  How attached have I gotten to these three ihan a week? He woo himself as he fell into a spiral of despair. How foolish of me to think that the very first people I entered would be my perma allies. It was already fortuitous enough that they're futanaris, that they are some of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, and that they seemed to like me to some degree. Hant I must be to assume they would follow me-

  "Well that's horseshit." Ara's hardened voiterrupted Shiloh's misery. He looked up, and was surprised to find his vision had grown blurry while he bemoahe loss of his panions. He realized that he had tears in his eyes, and he quickly wiped them away before looking back at Ara.

  "W-what do you mean?" He asked nervously.

  "I don't know about the other two, but I'm not scared of the depths of the dungeon." Ara said aggressively, her eyes dared ao disagree with her. "As long as we're smart, and as long as we don't bite off more than we chew, there's no reason we 't reach the bottom. It's already been dowice!"

  Twil nodded in agreement. "Theoretically speaking, Ara is correct. The fact that we know there is a bottom to the dungeon, and that we know the challenge will rise expoially, means that repare for anything. The biggest problem is going to be finding out just how much we o grow our strength before desding each level."

  Elnor still looked queasy at the thought of delving that deep, but Shiloh saw her look at him with that same, uifiable emotion he'd noticed before, and her resolve seemed to harden. "Of course. You both are right. It's been done before, and it be done again."

  Shiloh's heart swelled just as quickly as it had crumbled. They're going to stay with me. He felt the emotion welling in his chest, and tears began to rise to his eyes again. Before he could make a heartfelt acceptance of their help, Ara ruihe mood.

  "Besides, none of us are going to give up the best y we've had in months."

  ***

  "So, why don't we just power level until we go to floor seventeen and take on that boss?" Shiloh asked as they walked the early m streets of Chattery the following day, heading for the Adventurer's Guild headquarters.

  "Two reasons, mainly." Twil expined. "Firstly, delving the dungeon awards more experiehan fighting or hunting creatures on the surface."

  "For us mortals, anyways." Ara snorted. "We don't get to level up by getting id."

  Twil gnced up at her, and Shiloh could have sworn he saw the er of her mouth twit a smile before she tinued in her usual emotionless state. "Quite right. Sedly, the boss on each floor drops uems. Having these items proves that you defeated the boss associated with them, and earns you the respect of other adventurers. If we want to recruit more people to our party, which we will o do in order to reach the bottom, we will o collect the unique drops of the bosses from the previous sixteen floors to vinyoo join us on the seveh. Likewise, it would be foolish of us to accept aroup who hasn't defeated at least as many bosses as we have."

  "But if we train hard enough, we could skip the early bosses. Once we take out say, the boss on floor ten, we would have proof that we're capable of being on that floor, even if we didn't have the items from the previous floors." Shilued.

  "People would think urchased the items from other adventurers, or that we were boosted through the tenth floor." Elnor responded. "It's not a foolproof system but, generally speaking, if you've gohrough the effort of defeating every boss, people are more likely to accept that you're a capable adventurer."

  "Doesn't our level prove hoable we are, though?"

  "You don't tell people your level, Shy." Ara said. Shiloh turned in surprise to her, and she looked bashfully away. "I was teasing you and, as El pointed out, taking advantage of your y when I got all that information out of you. Seriously, though, you do not tell people your level. You don't tell people your skills, and you especially don't ask anyone about their information. It's a social faux pas and will make people think you're a liar, a dulrd, or someone who be easily maniputed. I love that you wear your heart on your sleeve, but those are things you just 't talk about. Especially ters."

  Shiloh accepted her words silently, and their walk tinued without another word spoken until they reached the Guild's headquarters. Situated in a park he ter of the city, it was an enormous, magnifit building, fashioned out of what seemed to be a single, enormous piearble. Pilrs flowed seamlessly out of the foundation surrounding the building and into the eaves thirty feet above their heads.

  There were dozens of people ing and going of all sorts of different races. Some were even shorter than Twil, stockily built and heavily bearded, giving Shiloh the impression of your cssitasy dwarves. Some had green skin and tusks jutting from their bottom lips, which Shiloh took to be orcs. Some were head and shoulders taller than Elnor, powerfully built, with skin the color of granite and white tattoos c their bodies in strange glyphs. When Shiloh asked about them, Ara informed him they were called goliaths.

  Then there were the demi-humans. A wide colle of people bearing, to a greater or lesser extent, animalistic characters. Some of them looked like they were almost half and half, like the man with two wings instead of arms and a beak where his mouth should have been. Others looked like cospyers fresh from a vention, with small ges like cat ears or a bunny tail.

  Shiloh gaped at all of them, drawing more than a few strange looks his way, but he couldn't help himself. He'd never seen people like this, outside of anime. One shirl in particur seemed to find his staring to be amusing. She had a long, reddish-e, fluffy tail and ears that matched it, givihe appearance of a fox. Her hair was the same color as the fur, and it hung down loose all the way to the top of her shapely butt. A tight, bck leather skirt barely covered her entire rear, and she was wearing a matg bck top that looked simir to a corset.

  When Shiloh's eyes finally found hers, she covered her mouth with one of her hands and giggled, waving from her waist with the other. Shiloh blushed fiercely and gave her a tentative wave back before she turned and made her way into the building. Ara elbowed Shiloh in the ribs and gave him a sacious wink.

  "Looks like Shy's got an admirer."

  Shiloh ignored her and followed Elnor into the Guild's headquarters, keeping his eyes on anything but the other people milling around. The building had huge stained gss windows depig various heroic figures in the midst of sying monsters, proteg is, or posing in valiant stances.

  When they crossed through the enormous, dark wooden doors banded with iron, Shiloh gasped. The interior was as incredible as the exterior was. The floor flowed from the walls as one piece, and there were several fountains and statues that rose from the floor in the same marble, truly impressing on Shiloh the idea that the eructure was carved from the rgest piearble he'd ever heard of.

  When he looked up, he saw the entryway had a vaulted ceiling, all the way to the roof, with marble deliers that also seemed ected without seams. The deliers had several trigs of blue fmes, steady and without flickering. Surrounding the entry, there were balies of a sed and third floor. In the middle of the foyer, there was a rge, circur desk also grown from the floor, behind which stood a dozen people who looked like they would be DMV workers oh.

  Elnot them into one of the lines leading to the desk, and they spent the forty-five minutes bored out of their minds waiting for their turn. When they got to the front, the man behind the desk looked up and gave an almost imperceptible sigh.

  "How may I help you today?"

  "Our friend here o be registered, and we would like tister as an official party." Elnor stated promptly.

  "That won't be a problem. What's your name, sir?" The man addressed Shiloh.

  "Shiloh Sutton."

  "And what role will you be registering under?"

  "Support." Elnor said quickly. The man raised an eyebrow, but Shiloh just nodded his assent.

  "Very well." He said, writing something down before handing Shiloh an archive key. "Here's your key. Are all four of yistering in the party?"

  "Yes." Elnor responded.

  "What would you like to record as the name of your party?"

  The four of them all looked at each other. They hadn't even sidered a name for the party, with everything else they'd been talking about. Ara just shrugged, but Elnor looked expetly at Shiloh. He thought hard for a moment before ing up with somethihought was clever.

  "Aphrodite's Apostles?" He suggested. Twil didn't react, Elnor blushed, but Ara wi him.

  "Sounds good to me." Ara said coyly.

  The man had virtually ion, simply rec their group name. "And each of your names and roles, dies?"

  "Elnor Ludger, Assaulter."

  "Ara Litton, Skirmisher."

  "Twil Reignover, troller."

  He copied down each of their names and roles before produg four round, silver badges. He pced a small device over each badge, there was a fsh, and the badge suddenly bore the name of their party and their own name. When he was finished, he passed out the badges to each of them.

  "Is there anything else I do for you?"

  "No, thank you very much." Elnor responded with a polite smile. She led them away from the desk, allowing the group behind them to step forward and cim the man's attention. They vaheir new badges into their iories, and Elnor lead them out of the foyer and down a hallway to ane room with a sign deg, "Looking froup" above the entry.

  Ihe room were many tables with partitioween them, allowing for semi-private versations to be held. The ter of the room had a rge marble obelisk, on which hung several notice boards filled with small cards carrying the details of individuals looking for a party to join or vice versa. There was a small desk o the obelisk with a quill, an inkpot, and a stack of the cards to fill out and pin to the boards. Elnor took the time to fill o while Shiloh, Ara and Twil all examihe boards, looking for any potential didates.

  "We're looking for anyone who has listed their role as either Tank or Defender." Ara told Shiloh as they circled the obelisk.

  "How many roles are there?"

  "Seven. Assaulter focuses on sustained, siarget damage output. Skirmishers do moderate multi-target damage, but also typically have a quirk that apaheir css, like self-healing, crowd trol, or defense buffs. If I had some defense buffs, we wouldn't necessarily need a tank, but my quirk revolves around a resource called Bloodlust, which generally makes me hit harder the lhts go on.

  "Then you have trollers, who are capable of disabling eo provide openings for their teammates. Supports provide buffs and healing. Tanks and Defenders are somewhat simir, but while Tanks hyper-focus on personal durability, Defenders give up some of that to offer more durability to their allies. Finally, you have Artillerists. They are exceedingly rare and highly sought-after, because they are capable of dealing rge amounts of area damage and taking out many enemies very quickly."

  "It sounds like other than a Tank or a Defender, an Artillerist is all we're really missing as far as position goes." Shiloh murmured, sing the boards for any such people.

  "Yes and no. An Artillerist would be an excellent addition, but we're uo find one of a low enough level to actually join us. Another Skirmisher or Assaulter would be o pick up if we , but my quirk means that we do without one for the first few floors if we have to." Ara responded. Shiloh was impressed to see she was actually capable of keeping her mind out of the gutter, at least when she was focused on strategizing and pnning for dungeon runs.

  "Then again," Ara tinued with her usual grin, "I don't think we'll need anyone else if you're able to fue better buffs into us."

  "Quiet!" Elnor hissed, having materialized beside them while they were looking at the board. Shiloh nearly jumped out of his skin, but Ara just waved Elnor off.

  "It doesn't look like there are many promising didates on here right now." She told the furious elf. "There's quite a few Tanks and Defenders, but they're all signifitly strohan us.

  "This one here only has the first floor's boss drop." Elnor poi a card slightly higher up thahers.

  "That sounds better than most of the ones we've seen." Ara sighed. "Still though, I don't know if they'll want to bother if they o wait for us to get Shy up to speed before taking on a floor they've already cleared."

  "They might not have much of a choice if they're on the board." Elnor responded. "I don't see many other low-level groups recruiting right now."

  "Well, get their details a's see what they think." Ara said, moving to another side to tinue sing for didates.

  In the end, they found four potential new party members. Three of them were Tanks, one was a Defender, and all of them bore female hough the cards didn't specify gender. Elnor took their cards down and brought them over to the desk, where she pulled out a sliding board on the front of it and summoned her party badge. There were two is on the board, one for a badge and one for a card. She pced her badge in its i, thehe cards o a time into the other.

  "What does this do?" Shiloh asked, watg her raptly.

  "It notifies the person listed on the card that we would like to talk about them joining our party." Elnor responded with a note of irritation in her voice. "Not that our party name is going to draw anyone in."

  "It'll draw in the fun ones." Ara argued, winking at Shiloh. "I think it was a great idea. Lets us keep any more prudes from spoiling the fun."

  "Any more prudes?" Elnor asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "Oh, I'm sorry." Ara gasped with fake astonishment. "Are you officially joining us on Team Slut?"

  Elnor rolled her eyes and pced the st card in the i before withdrawing both it and her badge. She pihe cards back to the board and found them ay table. There was a small chalkboard oside of the partition, which she wrote "Aphrodite's Apostles" on before seating herself at the table. Shiloh, Twil and Ara joined her, and they spent the rest of the m waiting for one of the didates to show up.

  When they heard the clocktower outside chime twelve bells, Ara decided to leave ahem some lunch. Shiloh was ied to see what she brought back, trying to imagine how carryout would work when magic was involved. He was staring off into space, pting how she would keep the food warm on the way back when he suddenly realized that the space he was staring into was occupied by the same foxgirl he'd ogled outside.

  Shiloh's face flushed as the girl nervously knocked on the partition, drawing Elnor's and Twil's attentions to her as well. "Hello. I'm Beck Quickfoot, and I received a notification about joining your party."