Nessa yawned, stretching. She looked at Milo, tapping her foot. “Come on, priest!”

“I’m doing my best,” Milo muttered.

Silas edged closer to the giant cyclops and nodded at Aster. “Am I a free man now?”

“You upheld your end of the bargain,” Aster allowed.

“Great. Time to leave this musty dungeon behind,” Silas said.

A blur of black dropped off the ceiling and bowled Silas to the ground. Alice pinned him down, angrily chittering in his face.

“Alice, hey! Let me go!” Silas grumbled.

“You can always come back, as long as the dungeon’s open,” Aster reasoned, shaking his head at Silas.

Alice glanced at Aster, then looked back at Silas. She hissed.

“Right, right, I got it. I’ll come back, alright?” he said, pushing her away.

Alice hopped off him and backed away. She cast him one last look, then melted away into the shadow again.

“Ah, great. Now I’m covered in blood,” Silas complained, wiping at his clothes.

Aster chuckled. He glanced back at Nessa.

Hands on her hips, she looked down on Milo. “Heal him next,” she demanded, slapping the cyclops under her.

“I only have one heal left. This is the last monster I can heal today,” Milo said, wiping his brow.

“That’s fine. Heal him,” she insisted.

Milo lifted his staff. Again, green light glowed around his staff, then coalesced in a halo around the cyclops. The cyclops closed his eye and trembled. Green light blazed from his missing elbow. It solidified, taking on the shape of a forearm, a wrist, a hand, fingers. The light faded, revealing his lost arm, once more made whole. All the wounds on his leg and side healed shut. His diseased skin cleared up, all the sores closing over. He shook his head and stretched his arms out, then let out a roar.

Aster startled, tensing. He tightened his grip on his hammer. Is she double-crossing us?

“Feeling better?” Nessa asked, looking up at the cyclops from her spot on his shoulder.

The cyclops nodded, rolling his arms around.

“So? Go home!” Stella insisted.

“Not until all my monsters are healed,” Nessa said.

Stella pursed her lips. She looked at Aster.

“Her monsters need to be healed. You agreed to it. The only one who can heal them is Milo. Would you rather send Milo to her dungeon? What if she kidnaps him?” Aster asked.

Stella’s eyes widened. She shook her head, her hair thrashing her face. “No!”

“Oh, hey. Am I that easy to kidnap?” Milo complained.

Aster looked him dead in the eye. He quirked an eyebrow.

Milo scowled. “Come on. I’ve only been kidnapped once.”

“But it was very easy,” Aster pointed out.

Stella nodded. She threw her arms out. “Thiiiiiiis easy!”

“Stella, that doesn’t make sense,” Aster said.

“But it’s big easy,” Stella said.

“No, that’s something else,” Aster replied.

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Stella tipped her head, confused.

Milo pressed his hand against the bridge of his nose. “Don’t I get a say in this?”

“Sure. Go ahead, Milo,” Aster said, gesturing for him to speak.

“I… well, okay. I don’t really want to go to a foreign dungeon. Actually… where is your dungeon, Nessa? I didn’t know there were any other dungeons nearby.”

“Yeah, not until the capital,” Silas agreed, crossing his arms.

“It’s in the mountains to the north. In the part where all the keep-needles trees grow, but no leaf-falling trees anymore, because it’s too far up,” Nessa explained.

Aster furrowed his brows. “A mountain range so tall that deciduous trees can’t grow on its upper slopes, only evergreens… the Sheer Mountains? But they’re hundreds of miles away…”

“The Sheer Mountains. That’s it,” Nessa said, nodding.

Milo nodded. “There’s rumored to be a dungeon in the highest part of the Sheer Mountains, but it’s never been officially documented by the adventurer’s guild. It’s too far north and too high in the mountains for most people to bother with. I know I’ve heard adventurers talk about it, so people delve it, but it isn’t an official dungeon… or, at least, it’s not acknowledged by the guild.”

“What’s a guild? It sounds nasty,” Nessa said, wrinkling her nose.

“It is,” Aster agreed, crossing his arms. He shook his head. “You don’t need to be acknowledged by the guild to be a real dungeon, no matter what the guild might think.”

“Sounds like something a fake Dungeon Keeper would say,” Silas snarked.

“Nothing fake about it,” Aster said evenly.

“We’re missing the point here,” Milo interjected. “The Sheer Mountains are hundreds of miles away. How is she here?”

“The passages,” Nessa explained. She pointed.

They turned, following her finger. The black portal stood at the center of the labyrinth, still raggedly rotating. The cracks she’d broken around the portal slowly healed, but the portal remained.

Aster looked at Killer. “You live in the labyrinth’s center… does it always look like this?”

Killer glanced at him, then laughed and scratched the back of his head. “Uh… it’s always there, yeah. Usually it’s really small… it only got big a few days ago. I didn’t know what it meant, though. It’d never done that before!”

“Is it always connected to your dungeon?” Aster asked.

Nessa shook her head. “Usually they aren’t connected at all. Sometimes, though, they’ll randomly connect. I didn’t know how to connect mine, so I just sat by it and waited for it to connect to someone weak-looking.”

“I’m not weak!” Stella said, crossing her arms. She shook her head at Nessa.

Nessa sighed. “I didn’t know you had human helpers. I wouldn’t have bothered you, then. Humans are super annoying, not worth fighting at all.”

Stella’s eyes lit up. She nodded. “I know! They’re the worst!”

“That’s why I let my monsters handle it,” Nessa said dismissively, flipping her hair.

“Not that you see many adventurers, being an unmarked dungeon,” Aster said. But if that’s the case, how did she get as powerful as she is? True, she isn’t much stronger than Stella, but until recently, Stella was an active dungeon. Hypothetically speaking, Stella should be much stronger than her.

“Plenty of people came inside to seek shelter. There was a small town inside my dungeon, once. They came in to get out of the ice and the bitter, winter cold…” She scowled, wrinkling her nose at the floor.

I wish I could’ve seen it! An entire community, living in harmony in a dungeon, using it for heat and resources without delving its resources or massacring its monsters. It’s almost a throwback to the old days of the land gods, back before the new religion and the adventurer’s guild, Aster thought.

After a second, he shook his head. No, that’s not what’s important. She lived peacefully along humans at one time—that’s what’s important. But… not recently, it seems. “What happened?” Aster asked.

“Humans happened. Other humans came in and decided to destroy the town. Then… they thought they could slaughter my monsters, because I told them not to attack my humans. They thought my monsters were tame.” Nessa laughed dryly. “As if.”

“Humans suck,” Stella said, putting a sympathetic hand on Nessa’s arm.

“Hey now. Some humans suck. Nessa was living with humans for a long time before humans attacked, isn’t that right, Nessa?” Aster said, cocking an eyebrow at Nessa.

She pursed her lips and looked away. “If I knew it would hurt that bad, I never would’ve let them stay in the first place.”

Aster nodded at Nessa. “Do you know why the other humans attacked your town?”

Nessa shrugged. “Why does anyone attack? Jealousy? Hunger? I don’t know.”

“Did they wear white?” Aster asked, glancing at Milo.

Milo frowned at him. “What?”

Nessa nodded.

It’s intriguing, but I don’t think this is a solution for Stella. For one, her dungeon isn’t in a remote, icy part of the world. The villagers don’t have a strong reason to live in her dungeon, and even if they did… well, a bunch of attackers wearing white… it’s possible that other villagers in the region grew jealous of Nessa’s village and raided it, but… white is the color of the Most High God. There’s no way the Church of the Most High God would allow a village to live in harmony with a land god, or rather, a Dungeon Spirit. In Nessa’s case, it’s debatable, since her dungeon is so remote, but Stella is so much less remote that the church would almost certainly hear about it.

Aster sighed. In the end, is the only route for Stella to face adventurers? I’d prefer living in harmony, but it might not be possible, with the world the way it is.

Stella looked at him, then jogged over and patted Aster’s leg. She smiled up at him. “It’s okay!”

Aster smiled back, reaching down to ruffle her hair. I can’t have Stella worrying about me. “That’s right. It’s all okay now.”

A distant roar sounded from the mouth of the dungeon. Everyone turned, startled.

Stella closed her eyes. A second later, her eyes flew open. “They’re coming! Humans!”