"Don't move!"

Lowe slowly returned to consciousness at the sound of that voice. He thought he recognised it, but it was pretty early in the whole 'waking up' process to be sure. Still, he was long enough in the tooth to recognise that following such a command was usually good business sense.

It got him punched in the mouth much less, for example.

Nevertheless, on this occasion, he did not think it was delivered as an order that would be backed up with physical violence if he failed to listen, so much as an urgent warning of which it would be sensible to take heed.

What had happened? He was at the museum, wasn't he? They had been running through a re-enactment of what had occurred the day Delphina had been killed. Yes. That was right. Arebella's friend was just giving the smarmy lawyer what for with both barrels when . . . something had changed.

Doing his best to stay perfectly still, Lowe's eyes darted around him. Yes, he was still in the Great Hall of the museum. Well, a version of the Great Hall that had been redecorated by a madman with a fire and brimstone fetish. Had there been an explosion? Lowe didn't think there could have been. His mana pool was full, which suggested that Roll with the Punches hadn't been needed to stick him back together again. But there was an awful lot of devastation lying around . . .

"I think we're the first to wake up," the voice said again. It came from behind Lowe, so he couldn't see the speaker without turning around. However, now that he was a touch more with it, he thought he had recognised the speaker.

"Preece, is that you? Are you okay?"

"Yep," the confirmed. "Living the dream."

"What's going on?"

"Well, I have two theories," Preece continued. "The first is that I'm still in bed and, for whatever reason, my psyche has decided to inflict a particularly specific nightmare on me."

"Okay, well, as I'm pretty sure I'm not a figment of your imagination, shall we put a pin in that one? What's your other thought?"

"That a Dungeon has spontaneously formed around us, and it's sat there, waiting for us to move and trigger it so that the fucking giant spider hovering just above us can swoop down and feast on our still shrieking corpses."

There was a pause. "So, I'm rooting for this being a nightmare then."

"Me too, Mr Lowe. Me too."

*

Lowe didn't have an awful lot of experience in Dungeons. In fact, other than being boosted through the one in Soar's undercity, he had no context whatsoever for what was occurring. He did remember, though, that Latham had made a big deal about not doing anything to trigger the Dungeon to begin before they were ready.

Unfortunately, in the last few minutes, it seemed that several other members of the re-enactment group hadn't got that memo . . .

"Interesting," Preece said once all the frenzy of activity had come to an abrupt end.

"I mean, sure. If you find visceral, appalling death 'interesting', then that was really, really, really interesting. Mind you, if that's your reaction to what has just happened to a bunch of your colleagues, I'm going to be moving you quite a bit higher in the murder suspect pool . . . "

"No, what I mean is that it is interesting is that all those guys running for the exit seemed to do so within their own instance. The Dungeon didn't start for us."

"And that's unusual?"

"Very. This Dungeon isn't treating all of us as being in one giant party. It's creating separate versions of itself for a fresh run each time someone starts it. I mean, I've heard that's possible, but I've never seen it happen. Mind you, I've never witnessed a Dungeon spontaneously generate before, so I think my expertise is pretty limited here."

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"I don't know about that, mate; you're seeming pretty fucking well informed from where I'm stood."

There was a scream as the two members of the Security Services, who'd figured they wanted out of this situation and fast, met a grisly end in the Hall's shadows. Lowe winced. Staffen was going to have his guts for garters over losing those two. Providing, of course, he made it out of here with his guts intact. That wasn't seeming too likely right now.

"Wasn't always a , sir."

Well, that answered a few questions Lowe had about the older man: his only being Level 14 if he'd reset his Class made much more sense. "Do a lot of delving in your time, Preece?"

"Sure. Some people might even have described me as pretty hot stuff, once upon a time. Wife didn't like it, though. After I got all torn up by Werewolf, she made me promise I'd never make another run and that I'd find a safer job. To tell the truth, I wasn't missing it too much until about half a bell ago. Now, though, all my old gear and Skills would be just the ticket."

A soft ping echoed in Lowe's mind, and a <<>> notification appeared in the corner of his vision. "You sure?" he asked the man behind him.

"Honestly, I don't think I have much choice. Ideally, you'd be closer to my Level, but you're the only person who hasn't completely lost their head thus far. I mean that metaphorically, of course. A whole bunch of folks have literally lost their heads. And, well, beggars can't be choosers. From what I can tell, each newly formed instance is benchmarked to the highest-powered person in each group. Which, again, is pretty damn unusual. I've got no chance against anything your Level, but as I have literally no offensive Skills, I'm not overburdened with options against anything I could theoretically fight. So, if I'm getting out of here, I'm going to need to do it behind someone else. But then again, you're Classless, aren't you? You got anything that's likely to be useful, or are we basically doomed?"

Lowe paused before answering. He didn't love the idea of lying to a guy being pretty upfront about his own position, but Latham had been clear that he shouldn't share anything about his unusual stats. "I've got a decent self-heal, and I can punch pretty hard. Oh, and I've got a flawless memory: when we get out of here, I can relive all this for you, beat for beat, whenever you want. So we have that to look forward to. You seriously got nothing that will help in a fight?"

" aren't known for their DPS. If - when - I get to Level 20, I was hoping to pick up something useful from my Threshold rewards, but right now, I'm going to be no help at all."

"But you've done a lot of Dungeons?"

"Oh, yes."

"Okay," Lowe said, accepting the party invite. "Consider yourself selected as my Dungeon Consultant. Your job is to plot our way out of here. I'll take the hits and do my best to keep us safe. Deal?"

"Deal."

The chime of the Party forming was overshadowed by a new voice coming from Lowe's right. "So is this Party-thing going to be a sausage-fest, or is there room for a member of the weaker sex?"

" Mehin? Are you okay?"

"Peachy. You know there's a massive spider right above us, right?"

"Yeah," Lowe said. "It won't do anything until the Dungeon starts. So, don't move."

"Okay. Well, that's not at all terrifying. Are we in a Dungeon? How did that happen?"

"If I were a betting man - which considering my appalling luck, I very much am not - I'd suggest that someone working here might have grave robbed the Core from that exhausted Dungeon on the edge of the city and then done something colossally silly with it. Probably involving necrotic slime and Dreadnaughts. Sound about right Preece?"

There was a brief silence. "I think you'll have to take that up with Director Nuroon, sir."

Lowe blew out his cheeks. "I might just do that. Fuck. Okay," he pushed the party notification to Karolen. "Look, the bad guys in here are coded to match Level. From what I know about , you're probably the only one of us who has a chance of actually fighting their way out of here on their own terms. However, if you want company and don't mind punching up . . ."

Karolen let the notification blink for a few moments. Lowe wasn't wrong in his assumption about her capabilities; she doubted there would be much in a Level 20 Dungeon - even such an unusual one as this - that she couldn't handle on a solo run. However, running it as a member of a Level 25 Party would have far better XP rewards and considering her sudden loss of favour with her firm's Partners, this might not be a bad thing. Oh, and if she joined up, she wouldn't have to tell Arebella she'd left her boyfriend to die . . .

"Okay, I'm in." Karolen accepted the invite, seeing the Level of the Spider above them change to a Level 25 as she did so. "So, what do we do?"

"Well, for that, I'm going to defer to our Dungeon Consultant. You have a plan for how we deal with that, Preece?"

For the first time since awakening in the Dungeon, Lowe thought he heard a trace of grim happiness in the man's voice. "Actually, I rather think that I do."