The right corridor was more of the same. They went from room to room, clearing it of little goblins and checking for anything strange among the stone walls. By the third room they cleared, Jeremy could see a clear distinction between the two men stepping forward to slay the imps and those who remained behind in the hallway. The ones doing the killing had shifted to orange, while those in the hall still had not. He and Mwai, as before, saw the smallest increments of change in their overlays. Mwai had only brightened to a slightly brighter scarlet.

Another thought occurred to him after the third room, which only had one imps. He frowned and scratched his cheek as they poked around the room for any information. Then he turned to Ashford.

“Hey, when you guys breach, are you sharing the kills, or is it one of you?” He asked.

“It’s usually just one of us firing,” Ashford told him. “Although sometimes it’s both of us if there is more than one going in different directions. But otherwise, we are trying to avoid too much ricochet off these walls.”

He waved around at said walls. There had only been one imp in here, and it had only taken one bullet to explode its head. But there was a little divot in the stone on the floor where the bullet bounced after going through the imp, a divot in the wall behind that, where it had glanced off, and a divot in the opposite wall by the arched doorway, where the bullet finally lodged itself into the stone.

“Right,” Jeremy said.

“Plus, it's not like it takes a lot to kill one of these things.” Ashford grimaced down at the body. “More than one shot really is overkill.”

Jeremy nodded along but was already lost in thought. There was not as clear of a pattern here as he originally thought. He’d been operating under the assumption that the two soldiers breaching the rooms were gaining the same experience, with the ones just behind them gaining slightly less. If it were the kills separating who got more or less experience, then the two breaching would not get the same experience since only one was doing the killing most of the time. But from what Jeremy observed of the changes in their overlays, both soldiers breaching were getting the same amount of experience. He tried to rub his forehead, but his knuckles knocked into the face shield. He sighed.

“So, dungeons themselves spawn creatures, right?” McGraw said as they moved away from the room. “That means that although we are clearing this place, more of the goblins will just appear.”

“That is if this all works like your fantasy stuff.” Mwai pointed out without looking back at the conversation.

“True, I can’t say I’ve ever experienced one in the real world.”

“But let’s just say we were in your fantasy world.” Mwai proposed. Although there was silence behind them as the soldiers waited for him to continue, Jeremy could practically hear the grumpy soldier rolling his eyes. “Is there any way of stopping the creatures from regenerating or shutting down the portal?”

“Potentially?” McGraw did not sound super confident. “It really depends. We just have to keep our eye out. Usually there is like a boss at the end to fight, but maybe this dungeon is really young and doesn’t have one yet? I mean, it’s still constructing walls.”

Jeremy thought that the dungeon’s ring meant that it was at least not a complete beginner. It had accumulated enough mana over time to level up once, which could mean any number of things. Perhaps the construction of the walls led to its growth, and once it leveled up, it could begin pumping out imps. Maybe that was why they were so small. Because the dungeon was still only on its first ring.

They arrived at the end of the corridor and found exactly the same thing they had at the other end. The last room had an unfinished doorway, and the corridor itself came to an abrupt, black stop. Nothing to see there. Just like at the other end, Jeremy felt a sense of déjà vu wash over him. He wondered if there was some reason why these magical places, such as the tunnels under Moira’s Lake or this dungeon, were built with shoots going off in different directions.

“I guess that’s it then.” Mwai stared at the dark end of the corridor with a frown. “Time to head back.”

“Hey, I just wanna know…” The shotgun soldier, whose name Jeremy had been trying to remember this whole time but could not, stepped forward. His little name tag on his uniform was covered up by the angle of his arm more often than not, and Jeremy did not want to be too obvious about craning his neck to get a better look. But anyway, the shotgun soldier stepped forward and held a pen toward the blackness as though he were going to poke it. “May I?”

Mwai glanced up from his radio and looked between the pen and the shotgun soldier’s face. Then he shrugged. Jeremy’s shoulders tensed as everyone leaned forward just a bit to watch the end of the pen. It just kept going as the shotgun soldier kept extending his arm.

Apparently, rather than being a curtain of darkness drawn across the end of the corridor, this was more of a situation where there was simply nothing beyond the end to reflect the light. The soldier’s arm and the pen were still perfectly illuminated, but anything around them was simply void. Jeremy’s shoulders tensed even more as a shiver seized him and rattled down his spine. He clenched his teeth together.

Everybody else relaxed and looked away, unimpressed by the anticlimactic act. The shotgun soldier pouted and tucked the pen back into his pocket. Jeremy took the moment of rest to pull out his own pen and the notebook so he could record his mental tally of imps killed and make a note of the fact that these kills had been pretty much equally shared until he forced the situation so that two of the soldiers had a few more kills, and thus more experience (or mana, or whatever the changing colors indicated the accumulation of). He tucked it away and tried not to let his eyes drag back over to the nothingness beyond the corridor.

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Things looked like they were wrapping up. The rooms remained the same as they walked past them, containing only the dead bodies of the slain imps. No new ones appeared, so it seemed like the entire dungeon had been cleared. But Jeremy couldn’t help thinking about the hastily closed-off spot where the main corridor had split. The closer they got to it, the more anxious he felt.

When they arrived at the intersection, the wall stood there silently, just like the other times they passed it. They paused while Mwai stared at the wall with his hands on his hips. Jeremy took a deep breath to combat the anxiety blooming in his chest. Ashford came over and stood beside him, rifle tucked in his arms and head cocked to the side.

“That’s odd, isn’t it,” he said.

Jeremy blew out a breath, glad someone else finally voiced it. “You have any ideas about it?”

“Nope,” McGraw shrugged. “No clue. Doesn’t make sense. The dungeon wouldn’t have done such a sloppy job. I doubt the imps can build a wall like that. What about you? Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of expert? That’s why we brought you along.”

Jeremy snorted. “Hardly. I don’t think anyone on Earth has had the time to become a dungeon expert yet.”

Ashford’s eyebrows lifted, and he went back to watching Mwai stare at the wall. Mwai took a step forward until his nose practically touched the stone and peered up at the seams where the messy stonework met the seamless walls and ceiling of the corridor. He fished a flashlight out of his pocket and shone it around the seam to get a better look. Then he reached out a splayed hand.

Thinking of the mortar that had crumbled under his fingers the last time he touched the wall, Jeremy spoke without thinking. “I wouldn’t…”

But it was too late. Mwai shoved the wall a few times as if testing its structural integrity. Beneath the pressure, nearly all the mortar instantaneously crumbled, as though his touch in one part of the wall sent a chain reaction through it so that every single stone became unstable. Each came crashing down in a great tumble of rock and dust, echoing off the ceiling and walls and down the left and right corridors. The gust of air kicked up by the collapse sent dust down all the corridors, blowing the flames of the torches.

Mwai barely managed to step back in time, so no rocks fell on him. Everyone else hopped back a few paces as well, guns at the ready, shocked expressions on their faces. Jeremy was glad for the face shield, which prevented most of the mortar dust from getting into his eyes, but it hung in the air. He coughed a few times and waved his hand in front of his face. The torch flames fluttered around, then rightened themselves as the dust settled.

“Parts of the wall weren’t holding together very well.” Jeremy finished his thought from earlier.

“You didn’t think to mention that earlier?” Mwai barked. He glared at Jeremy and brushed his sleeves off. “Could you see something about the wall? I should have known about it immediately!”

“No, I brushed up against it earlier and noticed – “

“Holy shit.” One of the soldiers interrupted, pointing past Mwai’s shoulder. They all turned to look through the new opening. As the dust settled onto the pile of stones, they could see into a large chamber several hundred feet in diameter that was similar to the one they first entered. Only large objects were visible through the haze, but Jeremy could make out a massive staircase in the center that led up further than he could see through the opening. It had massive curved railings that furled out to frame a raised platform at the base of the stairs.

This was the most dominant feature of the room visible, but the most interesting were the figures moving about on either side of the steps on the ground level below the platform. On one side, a table and a roaring fireplace splashed warm light across the room. On the other were rows upon rows of cages stacked on top of one another.

“You know,” the grumpy soldier muttered, but it was so silent they could all hear him as clear as day. Even the very walls felt shocked by the collapse. “Maybe the wall looked so shitty because it was built from the other side, so it looked nice from their perspective, but this is the backside where it didn’t matter if the rocks stuck out or the mortar dripped.”

“Someone was trying to keep the imps out?” Shotgun soldier mused.

“Or something.” Ashford chimed in menacingly.

Jeremy wiped away some of the dust that had settled on his face shield. The dust had pretty much cleared, and now he could see a whole host of glass bottles and instruments, like something out of a mad chemist’s lab, piled on top of the heavy wooden table. Over the fire bubbled several black-bottomed cauldrons, sending bubbles and sparks and colorful steam up the chimney.

For a moment, his mind snagged, wondering where exactly the chimney led. Did it open out into the create nothingness, where the smoke simply dissipated into the void? But then, a commotion on the other side of the room drew his attention.

Within the stacks of cages were at least a hundred imps. Their little fingers curled around the bars of the cages, which they shook with fervor. They clung to the bars and hopped their back feet onto them, kicking and clawing and making a terrible fuss. A few even opened their mouths wide and gnawed on the bars.

Whereas there had been silence just after the collapse, the chamber was now filled with a cacophony of shrieks, grunts, and various other nails on the chalkboard and horrific noises. And all the imps' little beady eyes were trained on them, glinting black and beetle-like in the firelight. Some were visible, but the cages in the corner, blocked by the rest of the rows, were encased in shadows so that only the reflections of those beady little eyes were visible. It was like looking down into a sewer filled with rats.

And perhaps most terrifying of all was the larger figure that stepped out from behind the steps on the side of the room with the table. Rather than a monster, it was a woman. But she hardly looked human. Her skin was leathery. There were no wrinkles in it, but the quality of the firelight reflecting off its surface, or perhaps the way it appeared too thick around her eyes, gave it the appearance of a hide rather than thin human skin. And it was pale, nearly gray.

She looked upon them with black eyes as beady and horrible as the ones in the imp’s heads. Jeremy took a step away from that stare without realizing he was doing so. She came around the table, revealing more details about her strange clothes. They were old and tattered but vaguely resembled a dress made of two parts. The tunic may have once been fitted to her torso, but it down hung loose. The skirt was pulled back with strips of fabric so that most of it gathered at the base of her back, revealing her bare feet and legs up to the knees.

She stopped just beyond the table and put her hands on her hips, long dark nails settling over the folds of fabric. Jeremy felt the same chill trickle down his spine that he’d experienced when looking into the void at the end of the corridor. He felt the same dread settle into his gut that had seized him when he first saw the old god in the tunnels. Even though the dungeon only had one ring, as opposed to the seven or so rings that the kelpie and dryad possessed, this situation felt ten times more dangerous. Perhaps it was because they were in a dungeon and not on earth, but whatever it was, the woman exuded a sense of absolute wrongness. His entire body screamed to turn tail and flee. Then, the woman’s lips turned down in a frown.