Josh took them back to the mayor's office, where Baara was holding court. There were half a dozen important figures from the town in the room with her, including Josh's friend Abraham. Josh was tempted to go in and interrupt, give her some breathing room, but she seemed to be doing fine. From what he overheard, she spoke quietly but firmly, and made decisions swiftly based on the laws that Darius had finished untangling. It was probably only to be expected. She had to have learned a lot from watching her parents.

Darius found them a small meeting room where they could clean up a little and have some snacks. They had left messages with the delvers and city guards at the pit, so they knew there were monsters in the tunnels now. Even though Josh expected them to break through his barricade soon, he didn't think they'd be an immediate problem. Monsters tended to calm down once their blood settled. They hadn't managed to kill anyone, so they hadn't gotten a taste. They'd patrol and sniff around for humans, but they'd be reasonably cautious. It helped that Josh and his friends had killed a lot of them.

Despite that, Josh had only gained a single level. He was pretty sure that he had only received a single point of experience per kill. It was frustrating to know that he had made a decent dent in a horde that could have easily devoured him, and yet the System dismissed them as “too weak” to give him a real reward.

Of course, he didn't say that aloud. He wasn't paranoid, but avoiding speaking badly about the System was just good sense. Especially when it seemed to be in a mood today.

“So,” Josh said, once they were all settled at the table. He would have liked to take a shower, but wishes and fishes. If his time in the army had taught him anything, it was that debriefings should be done as soon as possible. “What happened?”

Mary let out a sigh and leaned back in her chair. “Everything went tits-up before falling face-first in the muck, that's what happened.”

Josh grinned. “Was looking for something a bit more specific, yeah?”

Hou Zheng, the giant, hadn't taken off his leather armor. He leaned forward, creaking like an old chair. “We found the ladies outside the dungeon entrance,” he said. He had a Chinese accent, though not a very thick one. “As we had already been planning to enter ourselves, an extra pair of hands seemed prudent.”

“Having a Healer along was a treat and a half!” Mary said with a grin. “Got run through by one of those bird things with a beak like a spear, he had me all fixed up before you know it!”

Hou Zheng rubbed his forehead through the armor. “Yes, your... predilection for throwing yourself into danger was a bit of a surprise for me, I will admit.”

“There is a reason I never did a party with Mary while I was a Healer,” Darius said tonelessly.

Mary gave him an offended look. “Shove off, you're a Defender now, that's at least as bad!”

“Defenders don't have to pull spears out of people and manually shove the guts back in.” Darius gave her a flat look. “I assure you, I am enjoying my new role quite well.”

Hou Zheng chuckled. “Thankfully, my spells are advanced enough that I do not have to do such things manually. But yes, it is... a trial, at times.”

Josh nodded his head at the other new member of the party, who also hadn't taken off the armor. He couldn't complain too much, since he was still wearing his mask to conceal him from Identify. “Wot about her?” There had been enough comments to clarify her gender identity.

Hou Zheng put a hand on her shoulder. “This is Kun, a friend of mine. Unfortunately, she is mute.”

Kun bowed her head politely, and signed something with her hands.

Ruth brightened. “Oh! I know sign language!” She started signing back. “Nice to meet you, I'm...” Her hands paused as Kun replied. “Oh, mute not deaf. That makes more sense!”

It did. People with disabilities that couldn't be cured by magic typically did not go into dungeons. Or go anywhere on this side of the Burn Line at all, really. The City had more than enough room for everyone. Muteness was one thing; Josh doubted he would have even noticed, if he wasn't scrutinizing both newcomers. He would have just assumed the woman was quiet. But deafness would get you killed in the Jungle. Period.

Of course, you didn't have to be deaf to get killed in the Jungle. No one came out here looking for an easy life. He was still surprised that people actually had children out here, even behind the safety of village walls. He hadn't asked Baara how long she had lived out here, but the unclassed kids, at least, would surely still be back in the City if they had been born there.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He shook his head. He was getting off track. “Okay, you went into the dungeon together. Fine. But how'd you come out the bottom?”

Mary exchanged a look with Anna. That woman had been oddly quiet. She coughed discreetly. “Right... that might be my fault, I think.” She managed a grin. It looked less wolfish than usual, and more forced. “We cleared out the dungeon, got to the end. There was a crack in the wall. Not the rift hovering in the middle of the air, you understand, a big glowing crack in the dungeon wall. You know, the wall that never has a crack or break? Anyway, I touched it.” She shrugged, as if it didn't bother her. “Sucked us all in like water down a drain, spat us out where you saw us.”

“Which is why Hou Zheng yelled at you not to touch it,” Mary said icily.

Anna smirked. “Sure, it was an unexpected result, I'll admit to that. Still, I can't really take too much blame. Sorry and all, but that's never happened before.”

Josh found himself nodding along. He had completed enough dungeons to know how they worked. Once you got to the end, you were just spat out at the entrance. There were ways to seal a dungeon permanently, but most towns considered their dungeons a valuable resource, so they didn't like that.

They also usually didn't extend hundreds of feet underground and dump you out in a cave. “It almost seems as though the monsters were escaping through the crack you mentioned,” he said. “What was in the dungeon?”

“Digging things, like you saw outside,” Mary said. “So yeah, I think they were escaping through the crack. Which is, you know, terrifying.”

Josh was sure that her blank stare mirrored his own. If monsters could break their dungeons and escape, then their timeline had suddenly gotten much shorter. How long would it take the dragon to break free?

Hou Zheng, however, was shaking his head. “I don't think it's so simple. I know more than a little about dungeons. They are meant to be completely inviolable from the inside. I suspect this was the result of some external force affecting the dungeon.”

“That makes me marginally less worried,” Josh said, only half meaning it. “Especially since we still don't know what caused it.”

“Oh, that's simple.” Hou Zheng's voice was as bland as if he was describing his breakfast. “The rift that the dungeon was formed around was outside standard safety margins. It was an underground vertical tear of unusual size, which always end up as bad dungeons. The rift's unusual properties stretched the dungeon to its breaking point, and then any damage to the external runes would begin to weaken the security on the inside.”

Josh stared at him. Darius stared at him. Ruth stared at him.

Mary and Anna seemed to be fighting over a cookie.

“How do you sound so confident?” Josh asked finally. “I thought everyone was still in a tizzy on how dungeons really worked.”

The big man waved the comment off. “The runes are complex and mysterious, sure, especially without Enchanters to study them. But the basics are, well, basic.” He took a small paper cup from a stack and put it on the table. “A rift forms, and the Tower places a dungeon to contain it.” He started filling the cup from a water pitcher. “The dungeon contains the power of the rift until...” The cup overflowed. “...the power escapes.”

“On the day before the reset,” Darius said, nodding.

“No, hold on a mo,” Josh said, holding up his hand. “That metaphor doesn't work. If it's just filling up with power, then shouldn't it pop on different days, depending on the rift? Or, hell, even depending on how often the dungeon gets cleared out? Having them all let out on the day before the reset doesn't fit.”

Hou Zheng chuckled ruefully. “Yes, well, I prefer the fire metaphor, but I didn't think you'd appreciate me using that one.”

“Give it a try anywhy,” Josh quipped. “Just without actually setting anything ablaze.”

The big man considered a moment, his fingers drumming on the table. “All right, think of it like this,” he said at last. “Yes, the cup is filling with water. However, the water could not possibly fill the entire cup by the end of the year. The rift is too small, and even if used at maximum capacity, it would take decades for them to fill the dungeon—sorry, the cup—to capacity. Following so far?”

“Sure,” Josh said.

“Now, imagine that the cup is on fire.” Though Josh couldn't see the man's face, he could absolutely imagine him grinning widely. “The fire is eating away at the cup from the outside. Whether the cup is full or empty doesn't matter, the fire burns at the same rate, until eventually it collapses, and you're left with nothing but ashes.” He spread his hands wide. “At which point the Tower creates a new cup—a new dungeon—and the process begins again.”

There followed a lengthy silence.

“I've never actually tried to run a dungeon on the last day,” Josh mused. He was surprised to realize the gap in his own knowledge. “I can't say if that is a reasonable metaphor or not.”

“You can't go in on the last day,” Darius said. “You get an error. If the dungeon, or at least the parts of it that truly contain the rift, are being replaced on the last day, then that would explain most of the discrepancies that have been observed.”

“All right,” Josh said slowly. “And this mess we got in our tunnels?”

Hou Zheng shrugged. “As I said, the rift is larger. Not stronger, you understand, just bigger. Imagine the same amount of fuel, spread over a larger area. Now, in most respects, this makes the actual rift less dangerous, as it is unable to focus its efforts in bringing through powerful monsters. However, it seems the Tower made a similar mistake in trying to contain it. The dungeon itself is thinner, weaker, and is burning up faster.”