Navigating to Olmu was easy now that Owin's entire map was filled out, and handling the boss was just as easy as Myrsvai focused a barrage on the lizard's head, killing it without time to suffer.

Shade insisted on being the one to loot the body, but even with his new scarf, he was far from strong enough to move a giant lizard's corpse.

With Suta's assistance, the two found a white skin glove with the same pink frills as Olma and Olmu.

Olm Skin Glove

Journeyman Magical Item

The Olm Skin gloves are made from the Olm twins, Olma and Olmu. Like the bosses of the Fourth Floor in the Ocean, the Olm Skin Gloves grant a resistance to magical damage and a sensitivity to nearby magic.

“While that is a useful item, I don't see it being better than my gauntlet or your chitin set.” Myrsvai held the glove and pinched it between his fingers. “It is tougher than it looks. Like a light armor.”

“Suta, do you want it?”

Suta quickly shook his head.

“I suppose if it is necessary, I'll wear the pretty little glove.” Shade stuck his left hand out to Myrsvai.

“It's a right handed glove.”

The skeleton scoffed and switched hands. “Adorn me, good magus.”

Myrsvai sighed and set the glove on top of Shade's hand. “You can put a glove on easier than I can.”

Shade slipped it on and posed. “How do I look?”

“Still naked,” Owin said.

Shade gasped. “But less so!”

Owin ignored the skeleton and stood at the edge of the stairs. The black doorway swirled, looking like an endless pit.

“What is on your mind?” Myrsvai asked.

“I've never been on a fifth floor.”

“I suspect you'll do just fine, Owin. You are strong enough to climb to the tenth floor.” Myrsvai stood quietly beside him, looking down at the door. “I believe we will be parting ways soon. The top floors are isolated.”

“Do you know which ones?”

“The sixth is isolated while the seventh is common. Eighth and above are also isolated. When we consider the need for Suta and I to rest, and anything else that may hold us up, it will be best to act as though the seventh floor is also isolated. Do not wait for us. If we see one another, I would be happy to work together again.”

Suta hopped down the stairs. “One more.”

“He’s right. We still have a floor before we need to discuss this.” Myrsvai descended the stairs and looked up at Owin. “Time for you to see a fifth floor.”

Owin nodded and hopped down, passing through right after the magus.

Ocean Dungeon

Fifth Floor

Owin slowly walked down the stairs. Suta and Myrsvai already stood at the bottom, watching the two mobs inside the small hovel. Shade appeared behind Owin and immediately tripped down the stairs. He bounced off the stone steps and came to a rest on the wooden floor.

The cetanthro didn’t bother looking over.

Owin had never seen fish like them before. They were smaller than the rest of the cetanthro he had seen, and their eyes were huge for their faces.

Ocean Mob

Hanon

Cetanthro Painter

Level 30

Hanon sat on a stool with her legs dangling. She held a paintbrush in her webbed hand and dragged it over a canvas perched in front of her. The other cetanthro posed off to the side, attempting to stand as still as possible.

“Odd,” Shade said.

“Indeed.” Myrsvai smiled. “The dungeons are odd places.”

All of the paint Hanon attempted to put onto the canvas simply washed off, filling the water around her. A thin cloud of colors floated like a bubble surrounding her head.

Owin hopped off the top stairs and pulled Shade to his feet. He took a few steps into the little hovel, around the stairs, allowing him to see the full room. It was small with some vases for storage and a few hammocks hanging for beds. The only light came from a hanging brazier filled with lava.

A careful path through the hovel brought Owin and everyone following him behind Hanon, to avoid interrupting the painting, and out the front door into a dark cetanthro city. To his right was a huge metal building with intense, blinding light that came from something behind the building. Straight ahead was an odd serpentine building that curved around the base of a massive mountain.

“The seamount,” Myrsvai said. He gestured to the top with his staff. “The stairs are somewhere on top.”

“Shouldn’t the stairs be lower if we’re going down?” Owin asked.

“The dungeons will never make sense.”

More hovels identical to the one they just left spotted the area between the serpentine building and the metal structure. Hovels even spread into the distance, past the nearby boundary wall. He could spot cetanthro through the windows, moving about their little homes.

“Mobs can live outside the boundary?”

“I don’t believe anyone has an answer to that. Shade, do you know?”

“I don’t know much of anything.” The skeleton adjusted his scarf. “Is it night or are my eyes not working?”

“Neither. You have no eyes, and I suspect it is always dark here. We are far below the surface.” Myrsvai pointed to each large structure with his staff. “Which should we explore first?”

“I want to see what is making that light.” Owin immediately set off toward the metal building with the others falling in behind.

Chunks of shattered rock covered most of the ground. Unlike the other floors with their sandy base, this floor was hard stone all over. Some thin plants grew tall, reaching toward the faint bit of sunlight so far above. It felt dead compared to all the plants and animals of the last floors.

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Owin walked right up to the metal door without difficulty. “Is it trapped?”

“There is always one way to find out.” Shade stepped right in front of Owin. “Allow me.” With a turn of a metal wheel in the center of the door, he flung it open, causing it to crash into the wall on the other side. “Hello?”

Three cetanthro carried boxes, pausing as they turned to the door. All three looked the same as the painter with massive eyes and smaller bodies compared to the other cetanthro Owin had seen. A huge pile of boxes filled the center of the room with a few other boxes scattered near the door that Shade confidently stepped through.

“Oh, that may be unfortunate,” Myrsvai said. His index was covering his eyes.

Owin pulled his index up and used Examine on the fish inside.

Ocean Mob

Bruiser 2

Cetanthro Grenadier

Level 30

“What’s a grenadier?” Owin asked, letting his voice drop away as he made the connection. His eyes snapped to one of the crates without a lid, showing a pile of metal spheres. “Is it—”

“Yes,” Myrsvai said quickly.

“Is this one named Bruiser 3?” Shade asked, pointing to one of the fish.

Owin took a step back, leaving only Shade inside the room. The skeleton laughed about the names again.

“Which one of you is the most important? Bruiser 1 probably, right?”

Bruiser 1 squatted and set his box on the floor. He peeled up the lid and grabbed a metal sphere from inside. The others also grabbed identical items.

Myrsvai let go of his staff, grabbed the back of Owin’s headband, and yanked him away. “Run!”

Myrsvai’s staff fell to the ground as Owin turned and bolted, staying right between Suta and Mrysvai.

“Where are you guys going? Scared of the Bruisers?” Shade laughed. “Oh. Those are grenades. Shi—”

An explosion rushed through the door, sending a brief fireball before the water washed it away, leaving a wave of bubbles that rose through the water. The sound rumbled through the floor, only slowly dissipating as the doorway also cleared.

Owin had run farther than the hovel holding the staircase. He had gone much too far, even passing by Suta and Myrsvai, but after Katalin’s pipe bomb explosion, Owin figured there wasn’t such a thing as a safe distance.

The metal structure was unharmed from the look of it, but the mobs inside had not only detonated their own bombs. They had set off all the boxes nearby. Guts, bits of fish, and shards of metal and wood floated throughout the entire room.

“Shade?” Owin stuck his head inside.

A cloud of gray dust hung in the water near the door.

“He said he can’t die, right?”

“I believe so.” Myrsvai found his staff nearby. It appeared undamaged, but Suta still fussed over it, trying to brush off something on the side. Myrsvai walked past the familiar, joining Owin inside. “If not, I am unsure how to revive him from that state. There isn't much left.”

“I don’t know if he even tried to dodge.” Owin opened his index and selected the spell.

Summon the Withered Shade

His scarf managed to appear first as the rest of the skeleton formed from the nearby gray dust. The white leather olm glove was still on his hand, which was held in front of his face as if he intended to block the explosion.

“You’re back!” Owin gently bumped the skeleton with his fist.

Shade peeked through his fingers. “Am I?”

“Uh, yeah.”

Shade patted his face. “I have no skin!” He looked down. “My—”

“Stop,” Owin said quickly. “Are you okay?”

“Me?” The skeleton sighed. “Yes. Always. A constant.”

“You’re constantly okay?”

Shade walked into the room and grabbed a piece of floating fish guts. “That’s a deep question, Owin. Are you my therapist?”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

“Psychologist? Psychiatrist? Psychoanalyst? Thesaurus?”

“Wait,” Myrsvai said. “That’s not similar.”

Shade popped the fish guts into his mouth. It immediately fell out the bottom of his chin. “Owin doesn’t know that.”

“Now I do.” He tried thinking back to all the words Shade had just said. “Which one are we talking about?”

“It really couldn’t matter less right now, Owin. We know Shade can just be summoned again, which is a valuable asset. Even if Suta were destroyed, it would take hours before he would reform.”

“Wait, familiars can’t die?” Owin had never thought much about it. The way Myrsvai protected Suta made it seem like the familiar was constantly in danger.

“Familiars are tied to their masters. If I were to die—”

Suta tugged on his shirt.

“It’s a hypothetical, Suta. How else do I explain it?”

Suta made a noise and backed away.

“If I were to die with him summoned, Suta would continue to exist until his death in a fight or until the mana sustaining him wore away. For some familiars, that takes decades. You haven’t seen the houses, have you?”

“The houses?”

“Oof.” Shade strode over to a door on the left and knocked. “The houses are still around, are they? I have a memory of those. Somehow, that doesn’t even leave my mind.” The skeleton waited a second, knocked again, then tossed the door open. “Let’s keep the goblin out of there.”

A grenadier fish sat on the toilet in the next room.

Shade stared straight at the fish for a long moment, then reached in and closed the door. “You would think an explosion like that might scare it right out of you.”

The rest of the long metal room was mostly unadorned. It looked as though they had been bringing the boxes of explosives toward the center, which held a small dome with a wheel on top. There was nothing else around, except another door farther down.

Owin was too short to turn the wheel, so he stood nearby. Suta and Myrsvai soon joined him, but they were also unable to turn the wheel.

“Are there familiar houses in Atrevaar?” Owin asked.

“There was a small one a long time ago, but the city stopped funding it. Most are in the south side of Brukiya, though I know Vraxridge has a large complex. People tend to avoid that side of town.”

Owin scowled. A whole building of just lost familiars? What were they going to do without their masters?

After a while of contemplating loudly beside the bathroom, Shade wandered toward the center of the room. The skeleton tapped his finger on the metal wheel.

“What are we doing? Admiring the fishy handiwork?”

“We can’t turn this,” Owin said.

“And you need my unique talents?”

“Is having two hands and being taller than a goblin a talent?” Myrsvai asked. The magus didn’t bother looking at the skeleton as he asked.

“In this situation, yes.” Shade turned the wheel and pulled the door open. Inside was a little bunker that extended a few feet in every direction beneath the floor. There was a soft light from above, but when Owin stuck his head in, he quickly saw the lava stream emanating the light.

“That looks dangerous.” Owin sat on the ledge. “Is it?”

“Well, that’s lava.” Myrsvai stepped down into the bunker. He squatted and poked at the lava with his staff. “Yes, it is.”

“Are you confirming your own statement?” Shade scoffed. “What a loser.”

Myrsvai pulled his staff back. One of the fingers was a bit charred, but it was also repairing itself. “Touch it then.”

“Me? Oh. No. Lava and skeletons are not a great pairing.” Shade gestured as though he was going to close the dome on top of Myrsvai’s head. “You wouldn’t want any harm to befall me. Would you?”

“You just survived an explosion,” Owin said.

“And it hurt.”

“Did it?”

Shade shrugged. “Do you think that fish is done on the toilet?”

Myrsvai jumped out of the bunker. “Why? Do you need to go?”

“Oh, funny. The man without a penis—”

“Nobody was saying that.” Myrsvai made eye contact with Suta for a long, awkward moment. “This room seems incomplete. Suta thinks it’s trying to tell us something.”

Shade pushed the dome lid back over the bunker. “Like a hint?”

“Something. I have to agree. I have never seen such an empty room within the dungeons. Even if the cetanthro hadn’t detonated all their grenades, the only thing in here would have been boxes of explosives. That is not decoration.”

“Maybe Sloswen forgot to hang the self portraits on the walls.” Shade shrugged and walked to the next door. “What’s behind door number two?” He flung it open without hesitation.

Owin hurried over and was thoroughly disappointed. “An empty storage room?” It was similar to Naxile’s storage back in the Great Forest, but there wasn’t anything on the shelves or in the boxes and barrels.

“Now do you agree with Suta?” Myrsvai asked.

“Maybe,” Shade said.

It had been helpful to revisit floors so he didn’t have to figure anything out or ask any questions. He had already known what was happening through the first four floors. But on this fifth floor, his first fifth floor, none of them knew what was happening. For the first time, everyone was equally confused. Was that good or bad?

Owin waved Myrsvai toward the front door. “This isn’t even where the light was coming from. We’ll need to go around the building.”

“Good idea. I’m right behind you. Suta?”

“Yes.” The familiar ran after them.

“What about the fish?” Shade asked.

Owin stopped at the door. “Leave him alone.”

“What a polite goblin.”