They moved more carefully through the dungeon after their first encounter. But it seemed mostly unnecessary. They occasionally ran across a solitary six-crow and easily dispatched it. But even as they moved deeper into the dungeon, there weren’t any more rooms like the one where they’d been ambushed.
Charlie took in the dungeon, its barren walls, and empty rooms. Only scattered six-crow wandered its halls, the ones lucky enough to have been deeper in the dungeon when Geron and the others encountered the nest. He frowned.
“Orb, this dungeon is boring. We should make sure ours is more fun.”
“Fun? You realize fun for most dungeons is like… eating people, right?” he asked.
Charlie shook his head. “No! Fun to explore. Look, there’s not a single piece of furniture in this whole place! What if someone wanted to sit down? Or take a nap? Naps are important, Orb.”
Orb mentally sighed. “I think somewhere along the way we fell victim to massive miscommunication about what it means to be a dungeon.”
Axel passed around a water canteen. Roan drunk greedily from it before holding it out towards Samantha.
She eyed it in disgust. She grabbed a small wooden bottle from her waist, took a sip and returned it to its place.
“I don’t have any diseases.” Roan scoffed.
She raised a brow.
“I don’t have any contagious diseases.” Roan joked. Or at least, Charlie thought he was joking. He hoped.
“Save your strength. We have some time before reaching the end of the dungeon,” Axel said.
Charlie tilted his head. He wondered what the end of a dungeon looked like. Tensions were high after leaving the room where the attack had happened. There had been some disagreement about how to proceed.
“Should we turn back?” Vicke had asked.
Samantha rested a hand on her hip. Her head inclined with a sigh. “Well, if we do. The town will send others to clear the dungeon. We took the job despite being overqualified for it. They’ll be less experienced than we are. They’ll certainly die. It’s not unusual for the smaller guilds to overestimate their abilities. Adventurers go missing all the time. Three or four groups would have to die in here before anyone realized this dungeon wasn’t normal.” Samantha inspected her fingernails. “That blood would be on our hands. It wouldn’t bother me…but Axel and Geron…”
Axel’s hand wrapped tightly around the hilt of his blade. His thumb moved up and down, moving his blade an inch or so out of its sheath, and then returning it. It was an idle motion. Like his hand moved of its own volition while the gears of his mind turned.
“Couldn’t we report it?” Tirille asked. “Then we could—”
“No. Geron got the kid involved. We can’t go back to town anymore. Snatchers will be waiting,” Roan said.
“What exactly is a snatcher? I don’t remember hearing anything about them in school,” Vicke said.
“It’s… unique to the area, apparently. We only discovered them a few days ago. Doesn’t affect the dungeon, so let’s put a pin in it,” Roan said. “Samantha’s right, people will get killed here. But that doesn’t mean we should stay. Let’s get out of here, then send word from the next town over.”
“We’re staying,” Axel declared.
Geron nodded his head in agreement.
Roan made a show of digging a finger into his ears, one at a time. When he was done, he inspected his pointer finger and flicked earwax onto the dungeon floor. “Sorry. My ears were full of shit. You said we should hurry on out of here, ya?”
Axel glared at him over his shoulder and then walked deeper into the dungeon.
Roan looked around for support. “We’ve got two newbies and a baby with us! You can’t be serious.”
The others followed, ignoring him.
Roan sighed and fell in line.
For a while after, it had been quiet among the group. Tirille and Vicke bickered from time to time. Eventually, Samantha started explaining the origins of hexes to Tirille in great detail, a little too far away for Charlie to pick up on, and Geron trailed the rest of the group. He was more vigilant on their rear now. Turning more often to ensure they weren’t being followed. Vicke noticed him trailing behind and let his own pace slow as well.
“Is everything alright, Geron?” He ran a hand through his black, spiky hair and part of a six crow feather fell to the ground.
“Mhm. Just thinking.”
“About what? Something bothering you?” Vicke didn’t seem as rude when he was talking to people other than Tirille.
Geron looked over his shoulder, and then ahead at the others. “Dungeons don’t typically react to situations in real time. They can alter shape dramatically when they’re empty. But according to modern research, they’re unlikely to do so when humans are within their walls. It’s theorized that the strain on magic energy is higher when adventurers enter the dungeon. But nobody knows for sure. So, it makes me wonder, why did the dungeon intervene on behalf of that sixcrow before? What was special about it? Why did the dungeon want it to escape?”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Charlie’s face grew warm. He chanced a look at Vicke to see how he was reacting. Vicke paused, taking his time. As if he thought he was being tested or something. “Uhm… that’s a good question. Maybe Samantha knows?”
Geron shook his head. “It’s fine. For now, we should focus on what’s ahead.” He looked up.
“Orb, do you think they know?” Charlie asked.
Orb rotated inside the baby carrier a bit. “Nah. But we should be careful about how you use your powers. Why’d you save that creature, anyway? He wasn’t bonded to us. It didn’t feel the same as it did when I, uh… woke up Mousifer and Bleedy.”
“I dunno. I have like… this memory sometimes. Like someone is telling me a story. But I can’t remember what it was. Just bits and pieces. Or…well… just one bit. One piece. It felt like I should help. Like I’d be…hmm, doing what I was supposed to.”
“I see…well, just be more careful in the future. Have you heard that voice again? Since the last time?” Orb asked.
Charlie shook his head. “No…” he paused. He hadn’t tried to speak to it since the last time they fought. It had disappeared as soon as his magic had run out, but his magic was back now. So, what if…
“Hello?”
No answer. He frowned. Maybe he couldn’t just think the thought. Maybe he needed to project it to someone, like he did when he talked with one of the others. But who did he aim it towards?
He thought about the voice itself. He tried to project his mental words to the voice he had heard. Or at least, his memory of it.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
Charlie blinked. “It worked! Can we talk now?”
“Protocol reengage introduction commencing. Greetings, my name is Parent. This name is an acronym, short for:
Power
Articulating
Responsible
Entity &
Neural
Transmitter.
Parent.”
“What’s a neural transmit—”
“Essentially, I am a modified version of a resource commonly given to other-worlders by the System. I’m an interface. To prevent conversational repetition, I will now add the dungeon core, referred to as Orb, to my communication window. One moment, please.”
“Charlie, are you okay? You got quiet all of a sudden. Did you ever notice that Geron—WHAT THE HECK?”
“Completed.”
Charlie looked down the baby carrier at Orb to shoot him a bewildered look. “So, you’re an interface? What’s that mean?” Charlie asked.
“My job is to assist you with understanding and navigating your abilities. Normally, this process would be innate. Instinctive. But unfortunately, the System determined that you lacked sufficient excess processing power for me to exist. That is until Orb used his Sentience ability on me during the fight with the cultist.”
“I…did?” Orb asked. He paused. “Wait! I did sense something. I needed a target, and that’s when I felt one somewhere inside of Charlie. Are you saying that was you?”
“Correct. An interface is typically a non-sentient being that exists solely to interpret and enact its user commands. Typically, to access information. But the System forced me to remain dormant to preserve Charlie’s mental well-being. Orb, however, bypassed this restriction by granting me a consciousness of my own. After careful assessment, I have determined that my altered existence no longer presents a threat to the user, Charlie. The System must also agree with this conclusion. Otherwise, it would have taken action by now.”
Charlie looked up ahead down the dungeon’s tunnel for any signs of sixcrow or new rooms, but it looked relatively safe. “Hmm. So, you’ll help me with my abilities…but what exactly does that mean?”
“You’ve already proven yourself to be quite resourceful when it comes to ability usage. You’ve utilized a combination of abilities to fight in areas where you would normally be defenseless. In fact, I believe your neural plasticity will continue to be an asset to you in the future. That being said, currently, you have a bad habit of pushing your abilities to their limits in every engagement, causing the dungeon to collapse. If this continues, the integrity of the dungeon will continue to diminish until, ultimately, permanent damage will occur to the dungeon’s foundation.”
Charlie swallowed. He’d never really understood what dungeon integrity meant. He thought it was just a way of saying he couldn’t use magic anymore. He’d seen the dungeon start to collapse in on them after the fight with Lusafeen. But he hadn’t realized that was happening every time he exhausted his powers. “What would happen to me if that happened?”
“There would be a 99.98% chance of excruciating death.”
“Aga?” Charlie said aloud in panic.
Geron looked down, grabbing the straps of the baby carrier, and bouncing Charlie a bit. “Everything alright bud?” Geron asked.
Charlie realized he needed to take the whole dungeon integrity thing more seriously. “Okay…so I shouldn’t use all of my power because eventually it could kill me.” He paused. He didn’t like saying that. Or well, thinking it out loud. “But that won’t happen anytime soon, right?”
“Correct. As of now, the dungeon shouldn’t be under serious threat of foundational collapse. However, you should keep something in mind as you start to utilize more of the benefits that the dungeon offers. The more time and energy you invest into the dungeon, the more serious low dungeon integrity and collapse becomes. For now, try not to collapse the dungeon every time you face an enemy. As you gain more experience in using your abilities, you should notice you’ll be able to use them more often and draw out more power.”
Charlie nodded. He had so many questions. Now that he had access to Parent, he would be able to get more answers about his powers and how they worked. But he realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to get too distracted in the dungeon. Even Geron, as strong as he was, was on high alert. If Charlie wanted to keep Orb safe and make sure they made it back to town to rescue Merlin, he needed to be vigilant.
For now, one thing in particular stood out in his mind. Parent said as he starts to utilize more of the benefits of the dungeon…meaning there was more to it. The dungeon had more to offer him. There were things he was capable of that he hadn’t yet discovered. Soon, he would investigate that.
Tirille had managed to escape Samantha’s lecture and joined Geron and Vicke in the group's rear.
Geron offered her a welcoming smile. “Finally get bored with Samantha?” he asked.
Samantha flipped him a finger without looking back. A spark of electricity shot from the tip of it.
Tirille laughed. “No, I enjoyed learning about hexes. Samantha knows her stuff. Just thought I’d check in.”
Vicke rolled his eyes. “You’d know about hexes if you’d gone to school and earned your place here, instead of relying on a unique hex.” Vicke paused, a horrified expression on his face. “Wait, Geron, I didn’t mean—”
Geron shot him a look, a fire burning in his eyes. Vicke’s face tightened.
Roan spun at the commotion. He grinned. “Rare thing to see the big man get angry. Speaking of hexes, don’t forget you two signed a contract. That ‘special’ Hex of his is a guild secret. Tell anyone, and I’ll be the one they send to hunt you down.”
Vicke laughed nervously. Tirille nodded.
Charlie stared at Roan. He didn’t think it was a joke.
Axel signaled for the group to halt. “What is it?” Geron asked.
“We’re here. The dungeon core is in the room ahead.”
Roan sighed. “Perfect! I was just thinking, now would be a great time to get myself killed.”