The floating dust had to be an environmental effect created by the Dungeon. I could hear more monsters skittering in the distance.

"I'm okay!" I shouted back at the main group.

"Come back to the formation if you are done there!" Hector said.

They weren't coming to my location. I understood why. The dust made it impossible to see anything after ten or fifteen meters, even with improved senses. I was the Scout and it was my duty to see them through this place.

It also meant they wouldn't come to help me if I engaged more monsters. That was okay, the previous engagement barely lasted half a minute. Despite all that, I couldn't go back yet.

"Not yet! Hold formation!"

"We got you loud and clear! Take your time."

Before doing anything else, I listened for other monsters. I could hear the skittering but it was distant. This room was huge. Since no trouble was likely to find us in the immediate future, I set to work.

I retrieved the arrows while William pushed the bodies closer together next to me. A yellowish goop seeped from the wounds. They didn't display any special eye power and their bodies were too small to fit any digestive system. Most of the torso was the mouth cavity. How they ate if they did it at all was a mystery.

With a knife, I cracked the shell open. They were more crab than insect, now that I saw them close. At first, I thought it was a crab standing upright on only four legs and with the forelegs on backward. The eye stalks weren't on mollusk appendages. The mouth was where the crab's back would be, in the lower half, and the monster's back was the crab's belly. It even had that folding genital part. I think it was called the apron. The insides smelled of seafood. It wasn't a bad smell and made me think they were edible.

I broke one claw off and dug out the meat with my field dressing knife. William approached, sniffed it, then carefully chomped it off my hands. He chewed longer than he had to and then swallowed. I felt that he loved it. Also, it wasn't poisonous.

It might seem cruel to use William as a taste tester but I saw him eat garbage, broken pottery, and even carrion one time. I was pretty sure he could eat Wyvern venom pie and be okay.

Since I already had my field dressing knife out, I carved the legs and claws off, going from monster to monster, piling the limbs on an oiled tarp. The torso had some meat down the sides and I cut that off too. I had no idea if the eyes had any alchemical properties and they would be a bother to preserve. So, no eyes. William ate those, preening whenever he made one of them pop with his square teeth.

The next part was tough but the crash course we got at the castle stressed how important it was. We weren't delving into the Dungeon. Dungeon raid protocol required the team to dispose of and burn any monster remains.

The rationale was that Dungeons spent a lot of energy to create the monsters. A good part of it could be retrieved if the corpses were left behind. By burning them, we broke that recycling loop and starved the Dungeon of its resources.

It had the issue of generating smoke underground where air was at a premium. But most Dungeons cleaned the air automatically.

I stared at the dust, miraculously kept away from my face because of my enchanted hat. Not this air, apparently. Was it wise to start a fire here?

Probably not. The dust was very suspicious. Why put it here? Why the trouble to hide some weak and delicious monsters?

I was afraid this dust was combustible. Starting a fire here could make the entire room explode. And that led me to remember other tricks Dungeons used in the past to thwart invaders. Would the Dungeon use bad air to defend itself? We brought air purifying runes in this case but it would take a lot of MP just to let us breathe. At least we had one hidden spellcaster in our party. Sleepy should have a ton of Clarity.

Could it have a section underwater? Acid pools one needed to swim to cross? It all depended on what the consciousness inside the Core knew. The worst Dungeons were rumored to host the souls of dead Adventurers. These, even if the rumor wasn't true, were truly devious.

So, I couldn't risk a fire. Not my decision to make.

"William, stay here. I need you to keep the Dungeon from reclaiming the remains."

William bleated and went to eat the internal organs of a carcass.

The Dungeon couldn't absorb matter close to an invader. Every creature had a magical aura and it interfered with the Dungeon's absorption.

I cut another chunk of claw meat and set my lantern on a folding pole next to William. Leaving the Tityron there, I rushed back to the main team with the meat. The Knights let me pass.

"George, what is going on?" Hector asked.

"Twelve weak monsters," I replied. "Edible meat. I don't think we can burn the remains. This dust is suspicious and it might be flammable."

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To prove my point, I waved my hand and created eddies in the suspended dust.

"Good point. What were they?"

"The System called them Spider Half-Gibbermouths. Never heard of them. Despite the name, they are more crab than spider. I think they are edible too. Sleepy, catch!"

I tossed the chunk of white meat. Sleepy leaped and snatched it in the air, the meat gone before he hit the ground. Sleepy barked, eager for more.

Kara clapped, then remembered who was next to her and stopped.

"At the least, if nobody wants to try the meat, I'll save on pet food," I joked.

"I can test for most poisons," Hector said. "We will see if the meat is edible for humans or not. Forget about burning the remains of weak monsters. It's more trouble than it is worth. Let's gather the meat and leave the remains behind. These low-level monsters are very cheap. No point wasting valuable reagents that can be used on more dangerous and way more expensive monster corpses."

The group moved as one unit to where William was. Navigating was easy once we saw the lantern's glare through the dust. I gathered and tied the crab limbs, making a big rogue's sap and storing it in my quiver.

Then we had to explore the dusty hallway in the dark. My hearing was good enough to tell the direction and distance to the next pack of monsters. It took forever for us to walk to the next pack in this low-visibility room.

We fought another six groups of twelve to twenty Spider Half-Gibbermouths before we mapped the whole room. Only the Knights, my pets, and I fought. Hector and Kara stayed with the porters to defend them. The Experience was divided into eleven ways, which meant little to no progress toward the next level. With awards ranging from three to seven Experience, I needed to kill hundreds in this group to gain a level. The kill speed didn't make up for it but the lowered risks did. With a lot of allies with a high HP pool, the risk of suffering a serious or deadly injury dropped drastically.

*

"

We eventually found a huge rectangular opening to another chamber. This was supposed to be the Dungeon's first-floor boss room. A work in progress, obviously.

The interesting part was that the dust cloud stopped at the door and went no further even though we could walk into it without problem.

I assembled one of my lantern posts to mark where the boss room was and left my pets to guard the pole so the Dungeon wouldn't absorb it. One of the core tenets of delving into a Dungeon was that anything left behind was gone, eaten by the Dungeon.

We searched the rest of the dust room but unless the other tunnels were hidden high in the walls and ceiling, it was a linear thing. Without anything of interest there, we backtracked to the boss's room and checked it too. The room was big but aside from nine thick pillars equally spaced in the square room, it had only one more feature. We found the stairs down, at least. The Dungeon had more than one floor but I already expected that.

We camped in a corner of the boss room, with sight to both the stairs and the empty door frame to the dust chamber. Four improvised lamp posts using the same folding poles let the knights turn off their helmets to save their MP. The former were much more energy efficient than the latter.

Our tents, specifically designed to be used inside Dungeons, would stay stable even though we didn't affix them to the ground with pitons. Only Alice could pierce Dungeon walls. All of this was standard fare for prolonged delves.

The novelty was two barrels with a pole from which hung a round curtain on a ring pipe. The curtain rig resembled a prop angel halo when closed. These were our latrines. The first barrel was exclusively for number one while the second was for number two. The former had a divider with a water filtration enchantment. Pure water came out of a spigot in the back. While the latter had a desiccation enchantment and had to be regularly emptied. Its byproduct was a flaky dry substance resembling dirt or hardened clay. At least it didn't smell.

One of the knights joked that he would love to have one of these back in the last war. Another complained, as a joke, that they didn't clean the user at the end. Some crass jokes about unclean cracks followed, much to Kara's dismay.

I took the bulging tarp of monster meat and a drum barbecue grill out of my quiver. After Hector confirmed the meat was safe to eat, I spent a few hours cooking giant crab. The smell was mouth-watering.

"I can't believe you are going to eat those monsters!" Kara protested.

I cut a chunk that seemed to be already cooked and bit on it. "Hector said it was safe, my bonds ate it raw with no complications, and it is delicious. Everybody eats monster meat at one point in their lives. What do you think the mystery meat skewers they sell on the streets are made of? Most of the meat consumed in the city comes from the Dungeon. A few monsters are considered a delicacy and their meat sells for more than a gold coin per kilogram."

She wasn't convinced.

"I ate baby kraken at the Royal palace once," Hector entered our conversation. "The meat melted like butter in my mouth. Don't ask how much it costs. I never found it for sale."

"I bet it made every steak taste like shoe sole," I joked.

"Indeed," Hector said, his eyes on the barbecue. "Hit me up."

I took a leg with the tongs and swung it at him. Hector dodged with a laugh that cut out too short. He winced in pain but regained his composure fast. I focused on his shoulder and I saw him keeping it close to his chest as if shielding it.

Damn. He still hadn't fully recovered from that wound. It was already a miracle they saved his arm. The Lord must know about it and he was going to give a near-cripple the Dungeon Core?

Then I realized why. Hector was going to get the Core exactly because he was a near-cripple. With the achievement came a second main class slot.

Hector would get a Class with powerful regeneration Traits, dump all his Attribute points in Endurance, and supercharge his natural healing. Some extremely high-level people could regrow lost limbs; healing from his wound with a dedicated Class that did only that, was well within his means.

Later on, he could drop the Class. It was a choice available to anyone.

If I dropped my subclass, I would lose everything it gave, Attribute points, Traits, and so on. The only things I got to keep were the Skill and one Perk of my choice. The Skill would drop one rank and could never advance again. The replacement subclass had to be leveled up again from scratch.

That's what Alice has been doing for two hundred years to keep her Experience points from going to waste. One of her subclass slots, most likely the last one she got, was used in this carousel. Some people did that, sacrificing level growth for versatility.

Then there was a less-talked option of dropping one's main Class. Doing that brought one back to level zero. They got to keep only the skill with no loss of rank and one Perk. It was called "prestige reset" for some reason. Doing so allowed one to pick any Class they qualified for. Often one of a higher rarity. They also got a 100% Experience bonus until they reached their old level back.

The cheat came from having two main Class slots. Hector could get his regeneration-focused Class, heal his arm, and then drop it for something with more oomph. He would keep the regeneration skill and one Perk.

It was going to cost him a lot of Experience points but his father thought it was worth it. Not my problem. Except because we had one more noncombatant in our group. One nobody expected.