This had been Tine’s personal Dungeon.

I knew that it happened. The Hollow was almost built on top of a Dungeon and every Temple was built around one. When there were multiple Dungeons in a city, having people practically living on top of or next to the Gates who could deal with a Monster Surge was the best way to keep the Mundane safe. But having a Gate inside a bunker was a HUGE security risk.

While there were only a handful of documented places where two floors of a Dungeon were connected, it was theorized that every Dungeon Gate was connected at some point in its floors to another Dungeon Gate. It would make sense that was how Sipher was able to get around the world so easily, even though the Dungeon Tunnels, as they were called, so far had only been discovered between Dungeons in the same city.

There wasn’t a seal in place on the ring, which meant that a monster from the first floor could walk out at any moment into the bunker. Not that I was particularly worried if that did happen. The beatle and feline that spawned on the first floor were about as threatening to me as a pillow, but it was still a pretty large backdoor that we couldn’t secure.

“We’re going to start clearing floors now?” Nyssa glared at her father. “I just got off the road.”

“There is still time.” The raspy voice of the Anubis got me to move out of the doorway as he approached. “These are them?”

Gall only nodded and touched his CB.

My CB buzzed, letting me know that I’d just received a party request from Gall Tizon. I accepted the request and was able to see that the Anubis was Garlin Artis. The Artis were a fairly prominent family in Gues and ran a fair amount of the Dispatcher Stations in the cities of the Cathedral Ward. While it made sense to have someone with that background here, I wondered what had to have happened to get someone from that family to be working with bandits.

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Garlin began setting the floor destination and the gate opened up into a desert locale.

I started taking my armor out of my CB. I left the pants and shoes and just took out the jacket and gloves, then slid the strap on my sword’s sheath over my head. The others were already in the Dungeon and waiting for me, even though it only took a few seconds for me to get ready. I was glad that I’d opted for clothes made out of dungeon material. The Dungeon was very picky about foreign things. If I’d tried to wear clothes made from othside materials, then I would have been naked as soon as I stepped in.

I’d already figured out what was going on before Gall began opening the gate behind us. The Anubis must have already cleared the lower floors and he was going to bus us to the boss room, by taking us to the floor above where we wanted to go, then letting us walk back through the gate where the boss room on the lower floor was.

Gall walked into the darkness once the gate opened. The boss rooms were pitch black for a few minutes once you entered then as it waited for everyone to get in. Once someone used a skill, the room would light up and the boss would spawn. Taunting to spawn the boss, would make the floor boss spawn faster, but it would also spawn attacking the Tank. If the party wasn’t ready for that, then it could have very deadly consequences. Since it was almost impossible to get everyone into position in the dark, that was almost never used.

Light lit up the room soon after I walked in. We were in what looked like a rocky cave with sand all over the floor and falling through the holes in the ceiling that were also letting in light.

The floor boss looked like a cat with chitin covering it. The monster’s shoulders only came up to my hip, compared to some other first floor bosses, it wasn’t very big. I started to take out my sword, but Gall threw a glowing knife through the cat and it vanished in a cloud of smoke, leaving behind a crystal and a black dagger that was hooked like a cat's claw. Nyssa walked over and picked up the two items. The crystal was only worth a little more than an All and it looked like a common dagger, which would also only be worth a couple All. The gear was also worthless to us at this level, so I wasn’t going to complain about someone else taking the drops.

Gall started walking towards the open Gate and I followed after him with Nyssa right behind me. I had a feeling it was going to be a long, boring night.