Between the traveling and fighting to clear the Stronghold, we’d been going for over 20 hours, so we stopped to rest not far from it. Judging by the coordinates on the map, it would take three days’ travel to reach the Shining City, so by consensus I held off on preparing buffs for us with the Field Kitchen until we camped with the place in sight.
We slept in shifts, since there was a risk of monsters or hostile delvers stumbling onto our camp. None did, or at least, no one spotted us who was bold enough to attack, and what few monsters came close were easily driven off without waking anyone—it was pretty obvious at a glance that we weren't ordinary delvers.
The sun was setting as the city came into view. It didn't look like a monster-infested maze. In fact, it looked like the product of an incredibly artistic civilization, a place of wonder and marvels.
The operative word, of course, being LOOKED. If some naive, desperate delver stumbled here thinking it was a place of safety, well, at least its inhabitants would be quick about disabusing that notion. Shining City was actually considered to be one of the higher-difficulty dungeon types on the grand quest to assemble the Key To Freedom. The city's brilliant appearance was literally an illusory facade, containing everything from false floors covering deadly pit traps, to invisible ambushing alcoves, to false dead ends and passages that looked real but weren’t. In most Palance dungeons, you could get away with going off the specified path to a degree, or even entirely if you were very lucky, but not here.
However, we had a hard counter to illusions in Anna’s Familiar, Lee. Not only could they weave illusions themselves of incredibly versatile detail and scope, they could detect even the most convincing illusions of others easy as breathing. They could even share this perception with Anna directly, so she took point as we made our entry.
It was slow going, and at one point I lost count of how many times we passed through a fake wall in order to stay on the correct route. However, the city’s usually mischievous inhabitants came to respect our overwhelming strength and our ability to detect them in spite of their illusions after the third ambush against us failed epically, so we encountered hardly any enemies after that.
So, without a great deal of trouble, we stood before the entrance to the Palace. Both Palace and Stronghold dungeons had five levels, Palaces containing tougher enemies and more of them, as well as the floors themselves being larger to distinguish them. Responding to the map still held by Anna, the entrance portcullis rumbled open once we were close.
“All right everyone,” said Bruzigan, “Lightspear formation, just like we’ve drilled. We’ll conserve our Magical Maps unless a level gets tricky on us.
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That formation meant Anna once again took point, to spot any illusions and traps they concealed, and I followed close behind, ready to blast any sudden attackers—and there were plenty of those as we advanced. Next was Bruzigan, who would come forward to occupy any troublesome ones. Mewi stood in the middle for support, and Arvallei and Ri’legh watched our rear. It was a variation on our most standard formation specifically for this dungeon, and hypothetically for other illusion-heavy situations.
Carefully and steadily, we ascended the Palace. We fought conservatively, trying to deplete few of the resources we had brought with us to the 8th Floor. Potions could be bought with Deepcoins, or materials for Mewi to make them could be bought or scavenged from forests, but the further our preparations from before the Floor’s start stretched, the better. The Trials would not make this easy; Bruzigan had set as the goal to clear three of them before our brought supplies ran out.
Even a large percent of wealthy challengers wouldn’t be as well-supplied as us, and would have to source further supplies themselves much sooner; that was one reason, another being the difficulty spike, that the 8th Floor’s time limit was so large.
At the end of the 5th level, we avoided the highly explosive trap at the massive, opulent, and very, very fake entrance to the throne room, Lee guiding us to the real one. Enemy Scan identified the final enemy as a “High Silyph.” They were a potent caster in Light element, but with Anna and Lee directing us, we foiled him easily.
With their death, the palace throne was engulfed in a column of light, and when it cleared, an intricate, though small, treasure chest stood where it had been. Bruzigan, as the party leader, had insisted on being the one to open all Trial Tuner chests.
The Trial Tuner for each Trial Dungeon entrance had its own unique look. For this one, I was nonplussed to discover that it rather resembled the simple magic rod that I’d purchased with Item Duplication gold coins all the way back in the Tutorial.
However, it wasn’t a magical rod at all. As Bruzigan pointed out to us, a set of numerical coordinates was engraved on the length. On the opposite side were engraved tiny words, “The key has found the lock when the pulse becomes a steady glow.”
With the “boss” defeated, the glamour of the Shining City failed, revealing its dilapidated buildings and grimy, unkempt palace for what they really were. This also had the effect of driving away the remaining monsters. In a sort of daze, they wandered off, to eventually be taken in by and integrate into various lesser dungeons in the area.
Not for the first time, Mewi bemoaned his lack of ability to teleport himself and others, in spite of his ability to use Space element spells, as we left the palace and the city the old-fashioned way. We were in for much more old-fashioned trekking and camping as well—it would take a week more of travel for us to reach a new Landing City.
It would take even longer than that to reach the Forest of Illusion, the region that held the entrance to the Trial we could now unlock. At that dungeon tier, there were no multiple instances—meaning the six Trials were scattered across the entire planet. However, the type of Palace dungeon you could find in a region indicated the Trial you were nearest. There was at least one Palace dungeon for every Landing City on Kurz’kos, of which there were ten times as many as the Trials. And after the second, we would need to reach a special city—not a Landing City this time, but a nevertheless large community close to the Forest of Illusion.