Kiresula stuck her head outside. Then crawled out with the grace of a baby. As she finally hit the ground, Mayana, Kju, Zaiké and some other locals rushed to her. "Where have you been?" they asked in Mainland and Je-ashvehanu.
"I have been in the black cat dungeon. It was very narrow and dark. And there were insects with elemental attacks. But it was not dangerous per se. Just really narrow. And I got this!" She showed the scroll case, except that now it was no longer covered in the scrolls in the foreign language, but instead it opened easily. Inside were two scrolls.
Mayana hugged her. "I worried about you! The hole seemed to go on forever. I didn't hear you after a while anymore. I thought something ate you! Even if it just was the darkness."
Kiresula looked embarrassed: "I am very sorry. It was not a good thing to do. I shouldn't have gotten stuck on the puzzles. I could have crawled by, but was intrigued.”
Kju looked at her surprised: “You look as if you had an entire plate full of sweets.” As Kiresula didn’t understand and tried to clean her face, he explained: “Like the cat that gotten the roasted chicken.”
Kiresula looked a bit embarrassed: “I might look like the Kysan that got the [Conserve Comestibles].” She looked at Kju, who seemed also to glow. “And you might be the Kju who got all of the level ups?”
Kju grinned: “I am level 10. And just about everyone either has a class or preferred to wait. I levelled up literally 9 times today. And yes, my Fortitude is out of the blue system.This trip has been absolutely worth it for me!”
Kiresula hugged Kju. “Great! I am so happy for you!”
With the search for Kiresula successful, the group returned to an impromptu party. There was food, music on improvised instruments, singing and a lot of fun. Most of all, people had optimism. Kiresula helped flavour the food with her foraged things and several glitchlings perked up and taught her the je-ashvehanu names. One person suggested a talent show and the glitchlings showed off their level one skills, spells and abilities. A lot of the talents were rather quixotic and didn’t resemble anything that Kiresula had seen before. At one stage, Kiresula asked Kanzoo and Zaiké what Kju’s assistance was like and Kanzoo had issues articulating what the process was.
A while later, when she could move away from most of the groups, Kiresula checked the scroll case. It had one sheet of paper in it. Checking it, a message appeared: “Do you want to learn the spell [Bite of the Elemental Beetles]?”
Kiresula accepted it. She tried to cast the spell and it caused a very weak attack of a random element akin to what the beetles used. Her magical control didn’t allow her to choose what attack was chosen by the spell. Mayana saw her experimenting and came to her: “You have learned quite a few spells! Is that from that horrible hole that calls itself a dungeon?”
“It is one spell, but yeah. It is called [Bite of the Elemental Beetles].”
"A toy spell?" Mayana asked.
"I guess the dungeon had a lot of time while it wasn't delved by humans to make it." Kiresula thought out loud.
"You mean that it had nothing to do than distracting itself?" Mayana asked.
Kiresula nodded: "That is how it feels to me, yeah. The thing had no space and wasn't able to use a boss bigger than my hand. Or learn my language quickly. I don't currently see any issue with the dungeon being delved - unless you don't like small spaces, but… it feels that one holds on to its last Serens."
Mayana nodded: “That sounded like it.”
As the glitchlings were about to go to bed, they noticed a bit of a to and fro in the other side of the room. She was uncertain what the issue was, but paid attention partly to improve her Je-ashvehanu and partly because of morbid curiosity. She tried to be very inconspicuous, but when one of the glitchlings approached her, she realised just how bad she must have been at seeming uninterested.
“Memleket-people, you want to run the dungeon with me? Seníye and me cleared it three times but now Seníye want to sleep.” The glitchling looked at Kiresula “You have the spell too, so I am sure that you want to run again?”
Mayana and Kiresula looked confused. Kiresula eventually asked: “You mean this spell?” She cast [Bite of the Elemental Beetle] for a slight dust cloud.
The glitchling nodded and cast it as well and a significant gust of wind hit Kiresula. It was far beyond any of the beetle attacks she encountered. She had not yet learned how to upchannel this spell, so she raised an eyebrow.
The glitchling explained: “This spell becomes stronger when you succeed the dungeon. As it says: ‘If you win, I win!’”
“I was not able to read Je-ashvehanu. I didn’t know,” Kiresula admitted sheepishly.
“You do there with me and I will translate?” the glitchling asked.
Kiresula was tempted. The riddle with the paper still bugged her. She looked at Mayana: “Would you like to come with me?”
Mayana nodded: "Sure, it seems pretty interesting."
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She looked at Kju who shook his head: "I trust that stuff as far as I can throw it. Have you seen Yi-é's eyes? He's like someone who fell into a bottle, doing run after run."
"And Seníye seemed to have had no issues stopping." Kiresula remarked.
Kju nodded: "I won't risk it though. You can go ahead if you want, but I am kinda worried about some of the things that this dungeon can do."
Thus, the three moved in the light of [Illuminate] and found the hole. Now, there were stairs up to it and around the hole was a decoration of cats and glitchlings. Kiresula glanced into it. The stone no longer ate all the light, it was still very dark though. The hole widened and they were able to crawl on their hands and knees instead of on their bellies. There were a few puzzles. Kiresula did a few puzzle runs with the Dungeon of the Bridge, so she understood the first ones easily: one puzzle required arranging the flow of conventional and synthic magic without intersections. As soon as Mayana saw the riddle, she arranged the field with just a few movements. A simple sheet with markings was the reward. The next challenge was a battle against an elemental mouse. Yi-é defeated it with a few casts of [Bite of the Elemental Beetle]. Before the group advanced, Kiresula noticed something in her [Spherical perception]. There were faint depictions of glitchlings and cats shown on the uneven walls. She examined the shallowly embossed pictures by moving the [Illuminate] around. As she did, she noticed another thing change: a faint squiggle next to the entrance into the next room. She pointed it out to Yi-é, who said that it was a 7. Moving the light towards it, it changed and decreased. Moving the light, she noticed that whenever the cats where directky illuminated, the number decreased, when the glitchlings were directly illuminated, the number increased. When the cats were obscured, the number increased and it did the opposite when the same happened to the glitchling figures. Kiresula attempted first to ask people to obscure the cats with their hands, arms and body, that however also obscured the glitchlings. Eventually, Kiresula cast several instances of [Illuminate] near the glitchlings and then covered the entire room with [Foggy Terrain]. It first caused a thin mist, but upchanneling it more and more, the cave was almost completely obscured. Yi-é reported the number rising and rising until it hit 32. Then, there was a crack and another opening slowly opened. Yi-é returned from it with another sheet. Kiresula had to dispel [Foggy Terrain] to see it.
Then, they crawled forward and found another room. This one contained a chasm in the middle in which a rough stream ran. Seeing through the white mist, a sheet of a paper-like material was seen, held in place by a rock, too deep in it to grab it. Yi-é said: “Normally, this is for Seníye, who is a water mage. Can you swim in this?”
Both of the others shook their heads. Then Kiresula asked: “Can you?”
Yi-é shook his head: “I am too weak.”
Kiresula looked seriously: “I can change that for a short time. Get ready.”
Yi-é removed all of his clothing, causing the others to look away. Kiresula in addition also immediately dispelled [Spherical Vision] in order not to see anything untoward. Afterwards, she cast [Enhance Ability] to enhance Yi-é’s Might with as high as she could.
As the spell hit, Yi-é’s eyes opened in shock, then he crawled into the water. He dove into the stream, got the piece of the material and reached the surface again.
Yi-é handed it to Mayana and then went into the water again. A few moments later, he returned with a small figurine of a black cat. “I found this! This seems important.”
Kiresula stopped recovering magic and asked: “Is there also a figurine of a glitchling? The dungeon loves to combine these two symbols.”
Yi-é dove again and several breaths later, returned with just that. “There is! You know why?”
Kiresula responded: “In Ancient Imperial, the words for black cat was either a black cat or a glitchling. And this dungeon is old enough to remember.”
Yi-é raised an eyebrow as he climbed onto the other side of the stream.
When all of them were clothed and safe on the other side, Yi-é tried to combine the papers. He smiled as he showed the others. This time, the text was in three languages, one understandable by the Memleketians: “If you win, I win.”
The group crawled ahead into the next room. The boss room that Kiresula already knew. This time, the beetles were larger, about the size of a hand, but they still had their elemental colours. The battles were however not very difficult: Yi-é used the dungeon’s spell or just sheer physical force to smash them. The 7th level of the battle was a fierce-looking sabre-toothed rat with a forked tail, that was surprisingly fast. It was however vulnerable to the same trick that the goblins in the dungeon of the Bridge were: [Sunlight].
Yi-é made quick work of the rodent with a series of casts of the beetle spell. Mayana frowned at this display. Kiresula noticed but during the fight could not intervene.
After they finished and each of them found a reward scroll in the sand, Mayana spoke up: "I don't like this spell. Like, at all!"
Kiresula raised an eyebrow: "Why? Just because of what we talked about before?"
Mayana shook her head: "No, it's just… It can't be upchannelled, so it should be fast, and it kinda is, except that its staging and de-staging is so… complex. The staging would make sense if this was the kind of spell that costs ten thousand Seren to cast, but it doesn't. It just scales awkwardly." She paused, then shouted: "You can rest assured that this is the first thing I will do after the third threshold! I will freaking race to Level 192, that one you can believe me!"
There was a moment of stunned silence, then she spoke: "This dungeon challenged me! It will provide the full structure at level 192, after the third threshold and it wants me to try fixing the staging!"
Kiresula asked: "Will there be a reward?"
Mayana looked a bit embarrassed. "It didn't say that."
Kiresula put an arm around Mayana: "I get it. You felt that it was aesthetically unpleasant and inefficient."
Mayana nodded, then she realised something. “I guess that this was also before certain optimisation techniques existed. The Ancient Imperial magic was not at the level where it is now. While the later eras didn’t improve it as much, I think no one gelgetch staged yet.”
Kiresula agreed: “Yeah, Yayé was the first writer who talked about this. It made magic point costs go down by more than a third. Then there was hizli construction, which is like just a century or two old. Metamagic research is still rather recent. So, I guess to a point this is more of a historical document.”
Mayana looked mollified and actually learned the spell from her scroll, telling the dungeon that she’d be back the next day.
Kiresula read her scroll and the spell ranked up from rank 0 to rank 3.
Yi-é looked really happy about his rank up, but didn’t mention how high it was.
When the glitchlings returned to the huge sleeping hall, trying to be as quiet as possible, Mayana excused herself to try something. Kju saw at the two and asked how many runs they did before covering his face with his blanket again.
Kiresula smiled: “Just one, but I don’t think we will depart tomorrow.”