It was morning, the sun was shining, and Dan and Ray were going to a dungeon. On a very fundamental level, this felt dumb. Cities were nice places, with things like street food, other people, and beds. Dungeons were not nice places. At best, they were cages for people. System dungeons were worse than that. They actively tried to kill you. So why were they going to a dungeon rather than a city? The short answer was that after careful thought, they'd decided that it was worth the risk. Dan had relied heavily on Ray's judgment here. Dan had no framework for adjudging the risk of dungeon diving against the potential rewards; this was all still too foreign, there were too many concepts that would need to be explained in order to explain other concepts before he could even begin to make an intelligent risk assessment. So basically, his familiar thought this was worth doing. Dan believed, as a matter of principle, that he should trust Ray's judgment on most things, at least for the time being. Ray simply knew far more of the System, world, and, importantly, of Ray.

They had gone through Dan's list of questions of course. There was no such thing as an average five man dungeon team. Skills, abilities, classes, team coordination, experience, team synergy and composition (a different thing than how well a team worked together), equipment, training, and other factors varied so widely that there was no meaningful standard for an average team. Further, First Ray of Dawn Through Wet Leaves was a noble beast, not a member of one of the System races. As knowledgeable as his familiar was on a wide variety of topics, general dungeon mortality statistics were apparently not a topic they could speak to with authority. What Ray did know was that Espers with twilight raven familiars of level twelve or higher rarely had serious problems in level nine locked dungeons. Given that the Esper class was only indirectly useful in combat, this suggested that twilight ravens were quite a bit more than monstrously powerful. Since monsters were, you know, monstrously powerful by definition, and twilight raven plus Esper teams supposedly curb stomped them.

As far as his other dungeon related concerns went, the basic principle was that they generally played fair. The nature and degree of challenge they posed varied, but most of the time the problems they presented were soluble with good judgment, good preparation, solid combat ability, at least one aether user, and at least one team member with high perception. The latter two were evidently rarer than one would think. According to Ray, roughly one in one hundred humans were born with access to the attribute Aether Attunement, and it was extremely unusual for the attribute to be unlocked later in life (though all Vanguards had access to it). Further, most common classes did not have Perception as a core attribute. This had been an enlightening explanation. It also made clear that Dan was going to have to learn how to phrase his questions better, because when he'd asked about an average team (which apparently didn't exist) something like that had been very much what he had in mind. Ah well.

Again, there was a lot there to be uncomfortable about. That was even setting aside the obvious point that he was willingly about to enter a life or death fight against an unknown number of monsters of unknown kind and abilities. In a lot of areas, Dan felt that he had quite good judgment. "How to survive a System dungeon" was not one of those areas. He also had minimal combat experience and preparation. On the plus side he was an Aether user with incredibly high Perception, but Dan really was betting everything on his familiar here. Who he had met a day and a half ago. Life had gotten strange.

"Dan, do you see the stream ahead? We should stop there. There are berry bushes, and we can fill your water skin."

"Sounds good."

They stopped for breakfast, bright red berries plucked from a bush heavy with them that grew on the bank of a fast flowing stream. They looked and tasted fairly similar to raspberries. Dan filled two large exterior pockets of his backpack with the fruit before they left. If you were going to attack a dungeon, it seemed better to do so with healthy snacks packed.

Dan followed Ray through the forest. The large bird flew with quick, powerful wing strokes. For as much as the twilight raven seemed comfortable with lengthy conversation at rest, they weren't too talkative while traveling. It was uncanny how much the alien looked like a large raven from Dan's world. There was at least one physiological difference Ray had mentioned: Twilight ravens reproduced asexually and did not have genders. Also, their total population had some sort of a soft arbitrary global cap enforced by unknown means. Again, Ray was in fact an alien. Dan felt like they should be talking about the upcoming dungeon on the way there. In particular, he needed to know in much more detail what his familiar's powers were and how they could be applied. But it felt like an imposition to break the silence. Even though Dan was technically Ray's master, the alien raven was kinda intimidating in a way that made it very easy to err on the side of showing respect.

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They traveled for an hour before they came to the dungeon. It was deep in the woods where ancient trees towered above and shunted away most light. The entrance was a void of absolute, unnatural black, cut in an ovoid shape out of a massive boulder covered in lichen. Dan used System Identify on the tear in reality.

Dungeon Entrance - Prison of the Fallen Naga (Level restricted to 9 and lower).

"So... does the name tells us anything useful?"

"The dungeon may have a prison theme. I do not know what a Naga is. 'Fallen' , I have heard, may be a System race and corrupted to become monsters."

Well, that was disquieting. Dan made a mental note to ask later how an entire race could be turned into monsters.

"I might know 'Naga', at least a little. It's a word from my world, it means snake, or in some mythologies or stories, snake people. Maybe this is a prison of snake people monsters? The goblins I fought in my Initial Trial were more or less what people in my culture would have guessed goblins would be like."

"Very possibly. I think this is your dungeon, Dan. It does not feel right that you would appear here, now, so close to the birth of this dungeon, if it were not meant for you. It does not surprise me that its name means more to you than it does to me."

"I suspected. It fits the pattern. I'm given a unique opportunity with huge risk, huge potential reward and a short decision window. My best guess? This place is going to be tuned to our abilities, to challenge us specifically, but also be something we can handle." Dan felt suddenly tired. An escalating cycle of this stuff could get old fast. And eventually, he'd probably die. You could only get so many good rolls of the dice in a row. That was just math.

"I agree."

Dan sat down, leaned back against a tree, and took a long drink of water.

"Ray, before we go into that dungeon, I need to know what your powers actually are. What can you do?"

The raven chuckled, and shifted on its branch. "A direct question. No sense of mystery, no surprises. Very well. I can fly. My primary direct attack is Dark Bolt. That is now your best weapon also. It is especially powerful against living things."

"Powerful against living things is good. Monsters are living things."

Ray chuckled again. "This is true. It has a component of kinetic damage. This is the element that is effective against non-living targets. It also damages life force and causes lethargy."

Dan abrubtly wondered whether he was one of the baddies.

"My secondary attack is Lightning Bolt. Twilight ravens have only one parent, but those over level twenty may seek out another noble beast of feathered kind and gain their imprint to pass on to their chick before laying an egg. I am imprinted by a Thunderbird. This gave me a hatch right of greater agility, slightly greater aether attunement, and the Lightning Bolt Aether Ability. However, it is much weaker and more expensive for me than for a Thunderbird. It is very rare that I have had cause to use it."

Because of course Ray was part Thunderbird. Why wouldn't Ray be part Thunderbird?

"Within my domain, I may place one Sensory Locus that is limited to sight and hearing. Once per day, I may teleport from anywhere else within my domain to my Sensory Locus. While the entrance to the dungeon is within my domain, these abilities will not help us inside the dungeon."

"That's how you could watch me as I slept and make a dramatic surprise entrance after I killed the wrax?"

"Oh yes. There were other ways, but this was the most fun."

Dan remembered then that all twilight raven fledglings were incorrigible brats.

"Most of my abilities are based on darkness or negative illusion. Positive illusions cause a thing that does not exist to be perceived. Negative illusions prevent a thing that that does exist from being perceived. Among my negative illusion Aether Abilities, I can inflict temporary blindness, deafness, or loss of scent. I can become invisible, or silent, or hide from many other senses. I can cause short term amnesia. I can cause brief disorientation in a single target. Two illusionary abilities are my most powerful. One completely removes me from any form of perception or detection but also prevents me from using any other Aether Abilities or taking physical actions other than moving. The second removes all light from a sphere with an eight meter radius, centered on me. The illusionary abilities which effect me I can also use on you through the familiar bond, though at a greatly increased Aether cost due to your larger size. There are limits to how often I may use some of these abilities."

Ray was scary. Also, it was very odd that they had an ability with an area of effect so evenly measured in the metric system. Sam had claimed that this was another physical world, but it would all make much more sense if it were a simulation. Though honestly, even if that made more sense, that wasn't a lot of sense.

"OK, that's quite impressive. So in general, you can blind or otherwise incapacitate your opponents, then blast them with dark bolt until they're dead?"

"Yes. I have other abilities. I do not require sleep. I can cause a willing target to enter a deep sleep, or cause intense fatigue in an unwilling target. I can relieve tiredness, much like a good nap. I can sense lies. I can teleport up to forty-three centimeters in any direction. I can communicate with most of feathered kind. I am skilled at imitating sound and throwing my voice. I am very handsome and charming."

"Yes you are, Ray, yes you are. Ready to go charm some Fallen Naga to death?"

"But of course."