Before he could ignite his third star, Robert needed to find a safe place. The liminal void wasn't it, right now. Though he could depart and go back to Earth, he wanted to ascend now. He had no idea if such events triggered some sort of alarm. it was better to do it in private.

He went up, back to the planet's atmosphere above the hole in the ocean. Once there, half a mile above the churning waters frozen in time, he waited for his return to reality. The shockwave created a hole in the water but as it passed, the weight of the oceans above crashed down, throwing geysers of water thousands of feet up in the air. This saltwater worked as a conductor for the storm and giant bolts of lightning lit up and evaporated these plumes of water, causing the vapor to glow like a supernova.

Fairy-Robert darted between the jets and the lightning, trying to survive. He was wrung out of essence and about to ascend. He needed a safe place to do that. He knew a passage island lurked nearby and tried to orient himself.

The fury of the ocean mourning Carcinodon's passing waned and faded. The weather went from murderous to just shitty again. Robert saw the island he sought, the rock shining against the backdrop of the unceasing lightning storm.

He alighted on the island and saw something that resembled a person wearing a cloak and hood. It could be a rock formation but syke! A flash of lightning revealed arms and a face. It was a person!

"Greetings," the man said, and Robert found the voice familiar. The man dropped his hood and another flash of lightning revealed who he was.

Cultist Marcus smiled at Robert.

*

*

Fairy-Robert didn't like what was happening.

"Hold your fire, please. I am not an enemy."

Of all people, the dead man walking wasn't who he expected to find here of all places. This wasn't a coincidence. Robert said nothing.

"The void beckons," the man greeted.

Wait, how was he seeing Fairy-Robert if he was invisible? The man offered no answer to the unspoken question. Robert zipped to and fro but the man's eyes remained glued on him.

"I see you are confused. I am not the same person you met before. That was my brother."

"What do you want?" Robert asked.

"To return this to you," the man produced a book wrapped in plastic to protect it from the rain. Robert recognized the cover style, it was the same as the books he found in Cultist Marcus' storage ring.

"What is that?"

"Your journal," the man replied with a grin. "From a bygone era."

"Why bring this to me now?" He asked. Robert tried to figure out what was this man's deal.

"Before you departed through the Void Gates of Nirvana, you entrusted this book to us, your servants. You told us where to find you."

The hell? "What? How come? What makes you think I would have a bunch of deranged void-worshiping terrorists as my servants?"

"We are terribly sorry. But to keep the cult together through all these years, we needed to make concessions."

"What do you mean my departure through the Void Gates of Nirvana?" He knew what the term meant, it was the tempering technique to open a gate in one's soul to fill the void heart with free essence over time.

"The purpose of the Void Gates of Nirvana is twofold. It aids in the current life and in the next."

Again this crazy talk about reincarnation. Zaifyr, the haberdasher, said something about that too. But were the gates meant to be crossed? And did they lead to Nirvana?

"You told us to meet you in this place, at this time. And now, here you are. Welcome back, most honored priestess."

"I'm a man." Robert protested.

"Currently, yes. But in your previous life, you were the Pail Priestess of Song. Mistress of the Void."

"Why did your cult attempt to kill me, then?"

"My foolish brother decided to prove you weren't the real thing. He said that if you were, you'd have survived. He paid with his own life."

"So, what happens now?"

"In a perfect world, I will hand the book over to you, leave through this passage here, and we might never see each other again. We respect our patron's wishes. If you don't want us to ever contact you again in this life or the next, so be it. Your wisdom is absolute, Priestess."

What a bunch of cuckoos. But Robert wasn't in any condition to fight. "Leave the book between two rocks and go."

He bowed. "I am afraid I can't just give the book to you. Proper etiquette demands a trial before such gifts can be bequeathed."

Robert groaned and rolled his eyes. "What trial?"

"The book shall be at the end of a dungeon, on the other side of this passage. Defeat the monsters, secure your legacy."

The man made a dramatic pause, and then his voice boomed.

"Prove your worth, ascendant!"

He vanished with a burst of Space essence. A long-range teleportation ability. He also took the book with him.

Robert felt something inside him resonate. Whispers he couldn't pinpoint or truly understand but only sensed the lingering feelings. He needed that book.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

With a defiant look and all of his buffs active, Robert crossed the passage.

*

*

He found himself in a room with a stone plinth and two carved slabs of obsidian resting atop it. The walls were made of marble with obsidian veins. He could see perfectly though he saw no light source. Not many shadows either. It was as if the marble itself shone. He approached the slabs and read them.

This Dungeon has no connection to the void. You will find your favored affinity's effectiveness diminished.

Solve the puzzles, kill the monsters, and loot what you believe is worth taking. It matters not.

The Pail Priestess, at great pains, watched you do this Dungeon from a hundred years in the past.

Your success or failure, however, is impossible to determine.

Show your worth, ascendant. And claim what is your birthright.

After he finished reading, a wall slid off to reveal a corridor. His Void spells and his main talent were useless. He tried to activate it but it didn't happen. Perhaps he wouldn't be sent to the liminal void even if he spent more than twenty-four hours in this Dungeon.

Robert activated his buffs and moved forward. This corridor had a lot of cartoon characters, including Mickey and Minnie. A few had the same style as the two mice. Were these Mickey's friends? He could only guess. This corridor didn't seem to have any traps. He moved forward. The corridor ended in a sturdy-looking wooden door. After inspecting it with his spatial senses, he pushed the door open.

It led to a big room with a single mushroom in the middle. Robert dropped a resilient sphere on top of it. A mouth opened at the bottom of the cap as the mushroom started to scream and shriek. The resilient sphere blocked sound so it was silent. It released a cloud of spores. After five minutes, it went still. It seemed like a reactive trap. One meant to alert the other Dungeon denizens of an intruder.

Robert tried but couldn't put the mushroom in his storage ring. That confirmed the mushroom was a monster, not a plant. He regretted having to kill it but he did. The corpse and the spores went into a sealed bag and into his ring.

The room had one other door. He went through it. The corridor was straight and only made ninety-degree bends. It was much like the Minotaur Dungeon. At a fork, he looked down both ways and found something interesting down one branch. He approached carefully.

Desiccated cultist corpses littered the floor. Long dead, their flesh had dried, leaving mummified corpses. He saw signs of wounds and combat along with some brown dust he thought to be dried blood. He couldn't find a clue about the assailants. Robert searched the bodies and used telekinesis to take the items that struck his fancy. Jewelry, storage rings, and written materials like journals and books.

He went to the other branch. His prescience warned him of a Fire trap. The corridor would spew flames from small holes hidden in the obsidian veins. He wrapped himself with mage armor and the danger he was sensing diminished greatly. Shifting into his fairy form, he zipped across the corridor. The flames didn't pierce through the Force barrier his mage armor spell provided.

The next room had another mushroom and corridors leading to other passages. Iron bars and a warning sign specifically naming him warned him to not take these passages before finding the book. He decided to obey.

Robert found the next corridors to be without reason. It wasn't uncommon for a Dungeon, though. Some fungal growths in areas where water pooled, skeletons bound to the walls by chains, mundane and not of the undead kind. A pit trap he flew over and only noticed because his spatial senses caught the empty space beneath the breakable floor. A door to the side led to a room with an archway and runes carved on the pillars. A teleportation gate? He didn't stop to examine it closely but he did make a copy of the archway in his intellect fortress.

The next room was another big room. Its floor was made of black and white hexagonal tiles. Robert checked with his supernatural senses and found that the black tiles had some flat monster waiting for him to step on them.

He stabbed one with his spear. Teeth emerged from the black creature and it wrapped around the spear like a bag meant to eat whatever was placed inside. Robert swung his spear. When the monster didn't let go, he fired some Force magic missiles at the monster until it dropped dead. The other black tiles didn't react. Robert spent some time clearing a path and reached the other door.

This room was covered in murals depicting the end of the previous world. People flee in panic from monsters coming out of a rift. An amusement park in flames. Men fighting against their fellow humans for resources. The first Archhumans absorbing Prime Vestiges. He noticed that all of these murals had one thing in common. A tall woman of Asian descent, surviving. She was one of the few people ascending in the last mural. Robert found his soul resonating with these. Like some locked memories were trying to surface but never did.

He searched behind the murals and moved on. To the south, he found a series of four rooms that once served as living quarters for the cultists. These rooms had somehow dropped fifteen feet down, and one of the corridors linking to them became a ramp. The rooms were half-submerged and had nothing of value. It was just this nostalgia. This place had once been a lively and beautiful temple, where people lived in peace but now it was deserted, its inhabitants long forgotten.

To the north, he found another set of rooms. These seemed to be offices, a library with moldy tomes that long crumbled to dust, He used retrocognition on all of them but only recovered a few. Most were too damaged for his still-under-development spell to reach that far. After the offices, he found steel double doors with a demon's face etched on the metal.

He also sensed a strong lifeforce behind the doors. An undead lifeforce.

Robert wrapped his fairy form with a two-star mage armor and pulled the doors open.

The specter of a woman, ghastly and desiccated stared at him. She had long arms, deformed fingers ending in claws, and no legs. The lower part of her body just trailed off and became more and more transparent until there was nothing underneath. She hissed at him, waving her arms menacingly.

"Are you the Pail Priestess?" Robert asked, already knowing the answer.

The monster attacked. Robert pelted it with magic missiles. It retaliated with a cone of Ice essence that washed over his mage armor. Robert hit the specter with a two-star drain essence. It did nothing. Dismayed, he remembered it was a Void spell. They wouldn't work here. But sap stamina, slow, and magic missiles worked. He spit the essence from his satellite between his ongoing spells and shot the magic missiles out of his own essence pool.

The monster struck him with a curse that lowered his accuracy. He used purge essence to cleanse himself. It also did nothing. He flew around the room, kiting the specter on a fruitless chase. The monster started to create walls of ice to trap Robert. He started to find fewer routes to keep ahead of the woman's specter. He stopped with the magic missiles as he still didn't have the homing improvement and had to save some essence.

Without an option, Robert created an ability on the spot. A Force rapier he could wield in his fairy form. Weapon in hand, he turned and reassigned his essence to maintain his haste, prescience, sap stamina, and his force spells. The specter cared not for defense. Robert's rapier found no obstacles as he ripped into the monster's ethereal flesh. Normal weapons were useless against incorporeal enemies and most of his offense relied on Void spells. Perhaps this whole Dungeon was set up to prove exactly that.

Back when he first started delving into the Mollusk passage, he knew nothing about weapons. But now, Robert has more than three decades of practice. With his small size and mobility, he dodged most of the attacks and tanked the ones he didn't with the mage armor. Each blow took a good chunk of his essence reserves. But with each blow he took, he traded for five attacks from his Force rapier.

The specter lost an arm, then another. Forced to resort to only bite attacks, Robert severed its neck. The rest of the body vanished, leaving only a disembodied head. He heard metal strike stone but couldn't lose focus right now. Another series of slashes forced the specter to lose cohesion.

The moment the monster died, a plinth just like the one in the entrance rose. On the plinth, he saw a bucket. No, it was a pail. The book was inside it. Before he went to claim his prize, he found the object that fell. It was a diamond ring. A diamond engagement ring.

Inside, he read the words, "A promise kept, friends beyond the grave. Love, Gwen."

He stored the ring and the book in his spatial storage and left the Dungeon.

Outside, he felt the ring vanish, leaving only a clear crystal. He inspected the crystal and found it wasn't a diamond. It was something much more valuable, crystallized Ether. He stored the crystal back and looked at the book.

It was time to get some answers.