Rhen was about to die a horrible, gruesome death. The eight-foot tall, slavering moth monster grabbed Rhen’s feet and began wrapping them in acidic silk string. The moth monsters liked to eat their prey alive, like most spiders, and wrapped them in silk in a similar fashion for meal preservation.

The young dungeoneer carefully played at being unconscious, waiting until the monster’s tender underside was closer to his blade-hand. He only had one good chance at saving his life and, boy, did he not want to die. For one, Rhen hadn’t saved his essence in the dungeon’s resurrection node recently; he couldn’t afford it. So, if he died now, he’d get set all the way back to syntial level Prima I—and a different realm—losing about five months of progress.

More importantly, getting spit out of the gelatinous between realm after weeks of incubation, naked as the day he was born and missing all his gear, powers, and memories since his last check in was just about the most unpleasant experience of his life—aside from the dying he didn’t remember. Was Rhen even himself if he was reborn from the between realm?

A philosophical question that would have to wait.

The moth’s tubular tongue slapped against Rhen’s neck, tasting him. The slippery tongue slid across his cheek and lips with a wet schlick that made Rhen’s stomach tight with fear. He remained deathly still, for if he didn’t, he’d be dead for sure. The moth’s silk burned on his shins, and Rhen knew the acid was eating away his simple leather boots.

The monster’s mandala tattoo on its lower abdomen flared with purple light, and the silk grew stickier, and thicker. The moth picked Rhen up at the waist as it began wrapping his thighs in the anima enhanced silk, trying to ensure its prey couldn’t escape. But that lift gave Rhen just the edge he needed to close the distance with his blades before the monster’s razor-sharp wings could slice him in half.

It supported Rhen’s back as the cocooning process moved up to his waist, and Rhen tensed his grip on his crescent moon blade. He triggered [Swift Twitch] with a thought, significantly increasing the speed at which his muscles could contract. A surge of hot anima poured from the syntial—a mandala-like spirit tattoo that directed the flow of his energy. The anima coursed down his arms in a burst of blue light and the moth screeched in fear, but too late.

Criss. Cross. Slash.

In three swift movements, he diced the moth’s thorax, spilling its guts all over him. The monster didn’t even know it was dead, its body frozen in the wrapping pose before it collapsed to the ground. Rhen breathed a deep sigh of relief.

That.

Was.

Close.

He ran his blade down the sticky, acid covered silk, then stepped out of the half-completed cocoon. The monster’s entrails slopped off him to the ground and a shiver ran down Rhen’s spine. He could’ve been in those guts.

There among the gory mess was the small, glimmering purple gem. It was the anima crystal—the storage apparatus for all beings’ power which allowed them to cast spells, even nasty ones like acid infused cocooning silk, or awesome ones like Rhen’s swift twitch. Rhen thanked his luck for that ability, which had saved his bacon more than a few times now.

“Are you okay down there?” the concerned voice of Rhen’s delve leader called from above.

Rhen slipped the anima crystal into a secret pocket on the inside of his leather jerkin. He looked up at the hole created by careless anima drilling and gave a thumbs up. “Just another Horromoth, higher level though, and big. It had an ancilla level syntial on its abdomen that infused the silk with acid that, I assume, was to start pre-digesting me.”

“Gross,” the delve leader said with a shiver. She was a squat woman from the Dwarvish realm, competent and kind. She’d led the delve without incident—up to now.

But, so long as none of them reported the incident of collapsing rock because the knucklehead drill operator wouldn’t listen to Rhen, they’d all be fine. Incidents meant a docked pay, and no one wanted that. If Rhen had died, that would’ve been another story.

Deaths got reported directly to the Dungeon Delver’s Guild by the dungeon’s resurrection node. The reports were all reviewed scrupulously to ensure it was a dungeon death, not some back-alley robbery—or fighting ring games. Rhen wasn’t certain how they derived that information, but it wasn’t his business, or his problem.

“See any good veins?” the knucklehead with the anima drill asked as he popped into the opening he’d created with his careless extraction methods.

Rhen inhaled deeply through his nose and activated the small [Primordial Breath] syntial on his diaphragm.

“Light,” Rhen whispered.

The anima heat mounted in his lungs until he could hold it no longer. He blew all the air out with force, blanketing the room in a brilliant shimmering fog. It poured from his mouth like a steaming kettle and filled up the space. The sparkles faded to a dim, silvery glow, and the walls of the cavern winked back at him.

“Veins-a-plenty!” Rhen called back.

This was going to be an excellent payday.

The careless driller whooped. “All right, you make sure there aren’t anymore of them horromoths down there and I’ll get some equipment loaded.”

“No backup, Delve Leader? I almost died by cocooning just now.”

“Other team’s workin’ a dungeon node boss right now. Can’t spare anymore fighters.”

The dwarf woman disappeared from the hole above, leaving Rhen with the careless man who’s name he hadn’t bothered remembering. They were on a temporary dive together, not a long-standing team. That was fine, Rhen preferred not to make too many connections or stay in one place for long. He followed the flow of the dungeons, like many other dungeoneers, and with it came the wealth he needed to one day be a dungeon owner himself.

Rhen walked the perimeter of the circular cavern. The black rock was rich in silver and turquoise veins of ore. Lafite and Auramine. Not rare materials, but mid-tier. They’d fill his pockets with coin all the same.

A small fissure in the wall caught his attention and Rhen stopped. He squatted down, peering through the gap. It was too dark to see, so Rhen took another deep breath to fill the space with light. His breath clung to the walls, lighting up the narrow passage, before spilling into the cavern beyond.

It was enormous, and the angle of the fissure put his position at the top of a slight incline. There was a screech, and another horromoth flap-ran past the opening. This one was a beast of a thing, with even more spindly legs and a longer, thicker tongue for sucking up liquified guts. Maybe that was a node boss! If there was a dungeon node in that room, that’d be the real prize. Ore veins paid out well, but the dungeon nodes were the true objective for any dungeon owner.

Each node could be activated with different levels of anima to transform them for four distinct purposes; Resurrection nodes, which allowed delvers—or anyone really—to save a copy of their essence and be revived on death. Well, reborn on death. Rhen still didn’t want to think about that.

Then there were Mastery nodes, which gave holders of anima crystals the ability to integrate that crystal’s power into themselves, unlocking new spells, traits, and abilities. Third was the Control nodes. They could be used to map a dungeon and rearrange areas that were cleared of all large living creatures. These nodes were essential to set up bases of operation and delve deeper.

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Last was the most important: Nexus nodes. This was what Rhen so craved to find in his own dungeon one day. Nexus nodes connected dungeons by way of portal, sometimes even to different realms. Seventeen realms had been discovered and connected over the several hundreds of years that Rhen’s people, the Shin’Baran, had been dungeon diving.

A wide grin spread over Rhen’s face. “We might have hit the motherlode.”

“A node?” drill-man asked, excitement in his voice.

The delve leader was back at the opening with uncanny speed. “Stake it and get out. We can’t delve deeper here tonight if there’s a node boss. We don’t want to risk another collapse.” She glared at the drill-holder.

The glowing breath in the cavern faded, and with it, his enthusiasm. Going against the delve leader would get him kicked from the raid, and he couldn’t afford the dings on his record with the Dungeon Delver’s Guild; he had two already.

With a sigh, Rhen put his hand against the fissure and channeled his anima through the identification syntial on his side, then down his arm to the wall. A glowing white circle appeared in the rock with Rhen’s name and a three, his team number. Now the other greedy delvers couldn’t drill this spot without the tools registering Rhen’s mark. There was a lengthy legal process for anyone who stole another delver’s location that could have them removed from the Dungeon Delver’s Guild, but it typically wasn’t worth risking.

The drill-man dropped a rope through the opening. He pressed his hand against it and green anima flowed down it, popping the rope out into a runged ladder. Rhen was grateful to not have to climb his way out. Despite wanting to press on, he had been delving for a good nine hours already.

When he reached the top, drill-man patted him on the back. “It was worth it, right?”

Rhen glared at him. “You owe me new boots.”

He looked to Rhen’s feet to see his big toes were popping out of the dissolved leather. “Every man’s responsible for his own losses.” The drill-man retreated down the well-lit cavern to the sounds of buzzing tools and cracking rock.

“Fluffer…” Rhen muttered, wiggling his toes.

It was an arduous hike back up to the dungeon base, with several different biomes to traverse. Rocky caves that had once been populated by the horromoths, slimy tubes used by thick slugs called grubbers, big, open swampy caverns full of glowing mushrooms, and even a few spaces with open lava pits.

This was Desedra One, the largest dungeon in Shin-Bara, owned by Adelus Desedra—the wealthiest man for many realms. Rhen had worked Desedra One a few years back, but the pay rates were scandalous. Rhen, having a small scandal of his own at his last dungeon, didn’t have much else left to turn to. He was a good fighter, an intuitive diver, and those things mattered for something despite his record.

Finally, Rhen made it to the exit checkpoint where he was stopped by Reclaimers.

“Deposit here,” the Cadrian woman said, pointing to a bucked with her sharp nails. Her skin was black as night but glimmered with gold as if she’d been dusted in it. Her eyes were a sharp garnet, and two, sawed off horns protruded from either side of her forehead.

Rhen patted himself down, then removed the crystals from his many pockets—save for one. When twelve crystals, all mostly the purple of horromoth and decently sized, had been dropped in the bucket, Rhen grinned. “That’s it.”

In his periphery, Rhen noticed the floating [Orbeye], the monster turned monitor through anima control. The orbeye was a head-sized, all black eyeball encased in crystal that walked on twelve, noodly legs. The crystal glowed a soft blue, a syntial lighting up on one of its facets. It must’ve been sending a visual feed back to the headquarters right outside the dungeon, because the glow of the crystal was strong. He put his attention back on the pat-down agent.

An ancilla level syntial on the Cadrian’s stubby horn glowed a brilliant orange. That glow filled up her eyes, and she combed over Rhen with scrupulous care. He hadn’t expected to get such a thorough inspection on departure but knew that even a tiny anima crystal couldn’t escape the piercing gaze of [Detect Anima].

“Oh, wait!”

He pulled the secreted crystal from his jerkin interior pocket and plopped it in the bucket.

“Missed this little one.” He grinned brighter, and the Cadrian scowled.

She finished her inspection, but held him another moment. Everyone tried to sneak out little treasures, it was normal, but with Rhen’s record, he supposed it was only fair he gets the strip down treatment.

The Orbeye approached, glowing a soft blue, and then the syntial on the Cadrian’s horn flared to life again. The blue anima flowed to her temple and her oversized ears twitched. She cocked her head, listening intently, then nodded.

“Sen Thun-Desedra would like to see you.”

Sen wanted to see him, huh? That couldn’t be good.

The Desedra’s were an enormous family. Everyone who wed into it took Desedra for their familial name for obvious reasons. Power came with it, even in small measures for someone as low down as Sen Thun—a man who married into the family through a cousin of the main familial line.

So no, an invitation to see Sen was not good, but it was far better than a visit to Zeichen IV, named for her late father. She wore the real crown in the family. She was a first born in a long line of first-borns. A trip to her would take Rhen most of the evening—and there probably wouldn’t be a trip home—but Sen and the other extended family members scrambling for power stayed close to the dungeons and didn’t have the brazen guts of Zeichen.

Rhen beamed, hiding his apprehension. “Great, so… I can go?”

She waved him off without a word.

It wouldn’t have been that tiny anima crystal he’d “forgotten,” would it? That was too small an infraction to get an instantaneous notice to appear. It had to have been something else. Rhen hadn’t misbehaved in any way—well when there’d been witnesses. Maybe there had been witnesses…

Rhen walked with a swagger out into the wide dungeon opening, a wide-mouthed cavern of blackened rock and stacked pallets of goods. It was buzzing with activity. Anima powered train carts flowed up the left side from the checkout station he’d just been at. Those carts were dumped into a sorting station. People of all races sorted the crystals and ores, lifting them with a magical flick of their wrists and tossing them to the next appropriate station for size and power assessments. After their assessment, they were stacked into the pallets that were lifted by powerful machines and dropped onto vehicles bound for distribution centers. Desedra ran a profitable business of selling off their power to others, they had more than enough for themselves… Zeichen was practically a god, or so he’d heard.

The fast-paced chaos to the left was offset by the extreme, sluggish order on the right. A single-filed flow of bodies on either side of a blocky “checkout” station moved in and out of the dungeon, all waiting to be verified. Travelers with packed bags were headed to Nexus nodes, delvers headed in for work, and businesspeople of all kinds headed in for their various reasons.

It was maddeningly slow.

Rhen finally made it through the procession line and jogged to the sturdy stone building just outside the entrance. It was six stories tall and looked like some patch quilt of rocks. With every new level to the dungeon discovered and every Nexus node providing access to yet another dungeon, they had added another wing or level to the building to host all the managers who would observe those operations.

This dungeon operation was a shitshow, as made apparent by the dilapidated, mixed-media building that housed its operations.

Rhen moved through the over-crowded building lobby and went for the stairs. Knowing a Desedra, Sen would’ve posted himself up somewhere near the top. Rhen found a guard easily and asked for directions once he reached the top level.

He patted himself off when he reached the closed office door, covering the carpet with dungeon dust. There was laughing on the other side of the door. Rhen waited for it to die down, then knocked.

“Come in,” came Sen’s muffled voice on the other side.

He opened the door. Sen and six others were gathered around the table at the far end, ogling the projection of the Cadrian coming out of the Orbeye crystal.

Sen had the kind of stature that required six goons for him to feel safe. At five foot nothing and a mere hundred pounds, he relied heavily on his magic and his guards to protect him. Sen had bought his way into Tertia Level III, a master level of magic use.

Prima was the base tattoo, large and multi-functional, but usually not very powerful. Next was Ancilla, which was an addon to the Prima. It provided specializations and additional power on top of the Prima ability. Tertia was yet another extension on top of the Ancilla which increased the power and specialization of the ability significantly. Rhen doubted Sen had ever used his tertia ability in a dungeon… or any other worthwhile pursuit for that matter.

Rhen stepped into the room and straightened up. “You wanted to see me, Boss?”

“Yeah, c’mere.” Sen ran one boney hand through his brown hair and put his other over the Orbeye crystal. He twisted his wrist, sending blue anima into the crystal. The projection shivered, then the bodies in it moved in reverse until Rhen appeared in the projection.

Projection Rhen patted down his body, then reached into his hidden interior pocket with a grin. He dropped the crystal in the bucket and the Cadrian scowled. Sen made a fist and the anima stream cut, leaving Rhen looking at the man square in the face.

“I don’t want trouble in my dungeon.”

Rhen shook his head and shrank. “Same.”

“You’ve got a little record. You didn’t think anyone would notice at a place so big, huh?”

“That’s not it—”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Then don’t lie to me. What’s this about?”

Rhen patted down his gear, which was form fitting to his body. “I don’t have a lot of pockets, you see. I have to stuff the crystals anywhere I can. I just forgot that little guy.”

“I’d hate to add more to your record—could make you ineligible for the Dungeon Owner’s guild.”

Rhen kept up the innocent play. “I wouldn’t want that either. I will sew up the pocket. No more mistakes.”

“See that you do.”

Sen waved him off just as the Cadrian had.

“Thank you.”

Rhen turned to leave and let out a slow, quiet fart as he did. Just a little something for them to enjoy. With a smile, he watched the first goon gag, then closed the doors behind him.