Josh stood up and walked over to Mary and Darius. They were arguing over the pile of ant corpses that they were supposed to be sorting.

“Formic bodies are a wealth of materials,” Darius insisted. “Even one of these workers can produce poisons and acids that chemists find useful. Did you know that insects actually evolve every four levels instead of every eight? That makes their materials more valuable than they would normally—”

“Hardly even,” she snapped back. “And I'm not in a mood to carry a bunch of ant carcasses on my back so that some rich kid can buy butt cream!”

“It is far more than that and you know it.”

“Oi,” Josh called. They snapped out of their argument to glare at him. He weathered their looks and continued. “Are we good to keep going, or we need to call it a day?”

Mary cocked her head. “You don't want to try for 24?”

“I do,” he admitted. “That's not what I asked though, is it? Can we manage another room? I don't want to be another idiot who gets himself offed by being too greedy.”

Darius pushed his glasses back up his nose. “I do not recommend it. We have depleted our supply of grenades, and those were the only reason we were able to clear this room with such ease. We can return tomorrow with more supplies.”

“Muck that,” Mary snapped. “We burned through all our grenades, a good pot, and too much ammo. All that, and we didn't get anything out of it.” She waved her hand, vaguely encompassing the entire chamber. “There's no magic items stashed here, and the corpses are too heavy to carry.”

Darius looked like he was going to argue with that, but Josh interrupted. “What about the nectar?” He could smell the sweet scent on the air. Formic nectar wasn't the most valuable material to be harvested from monsters, but it was worth collecting.

Darius shook his head. “It's gone. If I had to guess, I would theorize that the formics ate it before engaging us.”

Josh frowned. “Wait. So we were fighting bugs hopped up on super-juice?”

“It is more complicated than that. Formic nectar increases their speed and aggression, but burns them out from the inside.” Darius paused. “So... yes, I suppose. I suspect that is part of the reason they proved so susceptible to our grenades.”

“Huh.” Josh considered for a moment. “Whelp, I figure that's one less reason to go on, yeah? I don't want to see how a drugged-out ant colony fights when we're not bombing their faces off.”

Mary put her hand on her hip and cocked her head to the side. “I dunno, sounds like a laugh to me.”

“That's what you said about nicking the 'special' candy from your aunt's stash last Halloween.”

Mary snorted. “Yeah, and I was right, wasn't I?”

Josh chuckled despite himself. “Yeah, you were right.”

Darius did not look amused. “I would like to note, for the record, that you two are definitely going to get us all killed.”

Josh and Mary both snorted. Like they'd never heard that before.

“Hey guys, over here!” Ruth called. She was standing by the doorway to the next room. “I think I've found something.”

They all walked over. “You found some new runes?” Josh asked.

Ruth bobbed her head. “Oh yeah, tons! More than makes sense, actually.” She waved her hand at the pieces of chitin surrounding her. Each scrap of carapace glowed with a single rune. There were at least a dozen. It seemed she had been practicing while the others were arguing. “I didn't get a lot of main runes, but I got a lot of connectors. Like, a lot a lot.” She frowned. “I think maybe I misunderstood what they were, because there shouldn't be this many if they're just articles and particles in a language, you know?”

“That what you wanted to talk about?”

Ruth shook her head to clear it. “No, no! Look, here!” She pointed at a circle of runes next to the door. “This circle is different from the rest of the runes?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Darius looked interested. “New runes?”

“No, no, I've already got all of these. I mean everything else—” She waved her hand to indicate the room. “Is baked into the walls. They affect the stone and the dungeon and have all sorts of redundancies. I could erase every rune in the room, and I don't think the dungeon would be affected. But this...” She tapped the glowing circle. “This is designed to be interacted with. It's separate from the rest.”

Josh looked around. While most of the walls were still obscured by wax, he could tell even at a glance that she had a point. All the runes he could see were in straight, unbroken lines. Like words written in a book. Or maybe signs written onto a building. They weren't meant to be removed or separated. This section, next to the door, reminded him of nothing so much as...

He blinked. “It's a switch,” he said. It was the perfect size to put his hand on it. “Like for a light, or a button for an elevator.”

“I have never seen a circle such as this, however,” Darius said. He peered closer, but was careful not to touch it. “Surely a glowing circle next to a door would stand out.”

“Oh, it wasn't glowing until I touched it,” Ruth said with a happy smile. “I had to put some mana into it. I think it only worked because I'm an Enchanter!”

That made sense. All of them, including Josh, had tried putting mana into runes she had prepared. They could do it, but it cost more mana than when she did it herself. It was one of many reasons she really wanted to find a way to let her items recharge themselves.

Josh tried to remember if he had heard about anything like this before. The problem was that even back when Enchanters were common, they hadn't wandered into dungeons much. No one had, really. They just weren't worth the effort most of the time. In the Old World, no one had really tried to reclaim areas lost to the Jungle, as they were too busy keeping what they still had stable.

He shrugged. “If you don't know what it does, then you don't know what it does. Let's get out of here before...” He trailed off, frowning. There was something off about the doorway next to the circle.

Ruth looked between him and the circle. She had a notepad out, and was quickly sketching out the circle. She had already filled the pad almost to full. “Uh, before what? Also, did you know that this circle is a palindrome? I wonder if that's important.”

Josh shook his head, still frowning. The doorways in dungeons were invisible, so he didn't see anything different. But something was different. Something about the way that the air was flowing—

His eyes widened. “Ruth, look out!” He tackled her to the side just as a magical spear came rocketing through the space she had occupied a moment before. As they crashed to the ground in a clatter of wooden armor, he heard angry chitters of frustration from the other room.

The rune circle had controlled the invisible door, and Ruth had turned it off.

Thankfully, Darius was on it. He jumped in front of the doorway, holding up his hands to block it with his shroud. Just in time, as a Formic Brute slammed into him, trying to push past. The shroud pushed it back, but Darius still grunted with effort.

Mary took up position behind him and started firing over his shoulder. “There's loads in there!”

“How many?” Josh called, still on the ground. “Can we take them with the choke point?”

“Not liking our odds!”

He paused for a heartbeat. “Hold them for a minute! I've got an idea!”

“You WOT? Josh, you mucker, get—” Any further cursing was interrupted by her own gunshots.

“Ruth, you too!” He stripped off his armor. “We need the wood!”

She frowned. “What are you—” Then her face brightened. “Oh! That could work!”

Josh started on the bracers. They weren't as important to his continued survival as the chest piece. He stripped the leather and ties off the wood as best he could, grabbed his tools and the water bottle, and piled them all together.

“Instant Crafting.”

The pile glowed, but there was a pause, as if the materials weren't sure what to do with themselves. After a moment, the glow brightened. When it faded, there was a small wooden bottle, similar to the grenades he had made earlier except without the pieces of metal sticking out of it. Also, there was an obvious seam where the pieces joined together, and he could already see water slowly starting to seep out.

Water Bottle (wooden) (shoddy). This is a degraded version of an existing blueprint due to shoddy materials, shoddy tools, or both. It is barely functional.

Josh shoved the “bottle” at Ruth even as he started on the next one. Idly, he realized that he hadn't received experience for crafting it. It seemed the System didn't want to reward him for making flawed products.

Between the two of them, they were able to make four grenades in about as many minutes. It required the sacrifice of their bracers and gauntlets, and Josh remained unsure if they would explode properly, but they were better than nothing. For the moment, Darius and Mary were holding the door. The room was filled with the bitter smell of formic pheromones, the sharp smell of gunsmoke, and Mary's constant swearing.

Just as Josh was bundling up the grenades to bring over, however, a new notification appeared.

NEW TECHNIQUE LEARNED: Scavenge (rank 1). A technique for deconstructing any constructed object to repurpose its parts. Increases your chances of finding usable parts when taking apart an object. Cost: 20 stamina (variable by equipment, item). Requires: None (variable).

He dismissed the notification. That would have been pretty useful about five minutes ago.