"That is insane," Amlyn said looking at the man with distrust on her face, "Even the Gates of Madness haven't had those kinds of stories made up about it. For a dungeon to have that much control is ridiculous." And the Mage nodded looking exhausted and leaning his head back on the rock.

"That is why we have no idea what to do, girl." He said, suddenly hit by a coughing fit. Harold cutting in as he could see Amlyn starting up another rant.

"Look, we get the reason to retreat, and we ARE going to try it. It's just..." He sighed, looking towards Rengar before continuing, "There is a chance that going deeper there might be a way out, or that the effects we are seeing are just limited to this floor. If so, we are close enough to the stairs down we might be able to sneak by or rush through even without fighting much. Dungeon monsters cannot travel between the floors since they are tied to them." Amlyn didn't look convinced.

"With all of the other things we have seen, and you are suggesting, you think this Dungeon's monsters will follow that little rule?" She laughed, though the mirth was clearly from irony and incredulity. Harold looked a bit sheepish, and slowly he nodded his head in return.

"Fine, we will try to just flee, its the safest bet for us to get out, and it looks like the Shaman was right to not come back." The Mage said suddenly, surprising both of them, they assumed he would just stay out of it after saying his piece. Yet, Amlyn had a feeling he knew a lot more than they did about this mission and the Shaman's report on the dungeon, especially with those words.

"You think that Rengar will agree with that?" Harold asked, his voice hesitant, "I was planning on carefully explaining the situation when he wakes up in a minute or two." And the Mage slashed his hand through the air before showing the back of his hand to them both. On it was a six pointed star with a sideways eye in the center. It was the symbol of the rebellion's inner circles, and the not-so-secret symbol they used in their pamphlets. Yet this one was clears of the former since it held a slight rainbow glow to it, and the other two could feel the oaths they took responding to it.

"By my authority there will be no refusal so long as I am alive, and this is a direct order for the two of you. Live, get out, and inform the council. This dungeon needs the best of the best to take it down, and I don't think that will ever happen. It's better if it's just left alone and ignored." The Mage said, a clear note of authority in his voice aside from what the mark naturally gave people. That was when both realized that the council would have never just sent a normal team here to investigate the scene of the Shaman's defeat. Of course they would send one of their best to survey, and they were just a security detail for this man, who was likely in the upper 60s or even into level 70. He had been holding himself back to hide this fact, but now it was clear from his posture alone that he would be going all out to ensure SOMEONE got to the surface and escaped.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Alright wake up Rengar, Harold." He continued, his voice suddenly hard, "We need to escape this death trap before the dungeon figures out what we are doing."

----

"Oh I already know." I mused to myself as I watched the party ready itself to flee. I was inclined to let them leave, not easily of course, because I wanted them to understand what entering my domain meant for all by my children. But, because the new leader had said that he would recommend that I was to be left alone. Which made me feel ecstatic since that is what I had been after, and it seemed like Yana and I were right about how the System affected people. Since even the strong mage class wouldn't even be a threat to the War-Queen who ruled this floor. A bit of nostalgia hit me as I remembered the first ants that I had taken and changed, the War-Queen was a queen of the massive black type that I had given enough magic to originally reshape the maze. Of course I had changed them more as time went on, and especially with the experiments and discoveries that Yana and I had done. Yet, the roots of this mighty creature that these invaders feared was once just a small, black ant.

Humans and Beastkin both could be just like my ants if they weren't so tied to the System, but they had made their choice and it was far too late for them now. I wondered what it would have been like if the System had been in place for me in the beginning. Likely I would have turned out like all the others and just been a slave to the machine. For what purpose I was forming a few ideas, but I needed more time to dive into the world. The bottom of the Mana Well was approaching if my senses on the task were to be believed, which was getting harder because they were sending back weird stuff from that deep into the world. To the point I was starting to wonder just what this world really was. Sure mana was everything, but the deeper I dug the more pure the mana got until it was just like that ghost. Where the core of it was something else, or somewhere else, and the mana was just this other thing breaking down into something simple.

My musings were interrupted by the next wave of attacks the Queen was sending against the team fleeing back to the first floor. She was very astute for even the ant queens and had a good grasp on tactics since she had been watching the humans during the battle at the wall. The constant skirmishes she had with the human fort now there just refined her ideas, but she was also an odd one because she didn't just want to kill a group. She wanted to test their skills of battle to see how worthy they were, and had even told me that she was looking for a worthy mate and challenge. When I had asked how she would get both from an invader, she calmly told me that I could do anything as the queen of this world.

It had touched me a lot that the ants thought so highly of me that I could remake an invader... My musings were stopped again as both the previous ideas and the current amused thoughts clashed in my mind. Could I turn a human or beastkin into one of my elementals? That human ghost had looked real until damaged too much, and had been made from mana though oddly. What was a mind or will but a pattern of mana? My presence throughout the dungeon condensed into the second floor with a feeling of a mighty predator on the hunt.

"I am a smart and curious creature after all..." I said, my voice echoing.