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  One thing that doesn’t get mentioned often by lower-level Adventurers when talking about Dungeon dives is how disgusting it is. Monsters in Dungeons don’t bathe. They aren’t tended to. They have no standard for cleanliness. Even in ordinary Dungeons, the smell alone is enough to put a lot of people off the job, and undead Dungeons are even worse. Their denizens are filthy, not only on the outside, but on the inside too.

  With living monsters, there’s at least a bit of satisfaction and relief upon victory. I can’t say that I find the scent of blood pleasant, but I can’t deny that there’s something exhilarating about the way the coppery aroma fills my head; it’s like a shot of pure adrenaline. Not so for undead, unfortunately. The “blood” is more rot than anything else, and the smell is absolute torture. Even the floor boss that looked so intact and alive on the outside was no exception. When I finally landed the finishing blow, whatever magic had been keeping it intact failed, and its flesh started to ooze off the ancient bones and what remained of its organs deteriorated into a foul sludge.

  Needless to say, I did not stick around to admire my handiwork. The boss’s spear and core could have netted me a few gold, had I stayed to collect it, but having them on me would be suspicious, and I didn’t feel like I had earned it in the first place. Sure I had defeated it legitimately, but unlike everyone else who had done the same, I was not exhausted from fighting dozens of other foes on my way in. They weren't worth enough to sacrifice my integrity, or my nose.

  On top of that, I was pressed for time to return. I had promised to meet the other three adventurers by sunrise, and as far as I could tell, that time was rapidly approaching. If I dawdled, I would have to meet them smelling like the walking corpse I was, and as much as I try not to care about appearances, smell is one thing I refuse to compromise on. If you ever meet me and I do not smell clean, it would be best for you to leave immediately, because in that case, one of two things must be true: either that is not me, or you have caught me at the worst possible time, and I am in a very bad mood.

  I made it out of the Dungeon without issue. My [Invisibility] was much stronger with my new levels, but it hardly mattered, because I didn’t need to sneak past anyone but the drowsy guards. Honestly, a smell neutralizing spell would have been more useful. Neither of them heard or saw me, but one did wrinkle his nose as I crept by.

  It was not quite sunrise, but the sky was gray, and beginning to orangen*, and the first of the Adventurers were out on the hillside preparing to enter the Dungeon. I did a quick scan, and, not seeing my companions, turned around back into the woods to clean myself off. I moved as quickly as I could, but in order to get a proper clean, I was not able to finish before the sun peeked out over the horizon, so I had to sprint back.

  Or at least I thought I had to. Apparently, in Astraeus, “sunrise” is not a word to indicate the time during which the sun is emerging.

  “Oh, Lucy, you’re early!” exclaimed Christine. “Did you wait long?”

  “Yes,” I said, oblivious. “Did you not say sunrise?”

  “I did,” she said, confused. “But it is still five minutes till.”

  I glanced at the sky, wondering if she was concussed or otherwise mentally impaired.

  “The sun rose half an hour ago.”

  “Yes?” she agreed.

  “Is that not what sunrise means?”

  “Huh?”

  “Lucy, what are you talking about?” asked Pierre.

  “You said to meet at sunrise, but the sun rose thirty minutes ago.”

  “Uhhh, yeah,” he said. “And so sunrise is in five minutes.”

  “How is sunrise in five minutes if the sun has already risen?”

  “...Because that’s how sunrise works?”

  “No. No, it’s not.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on a second,” said Al. “Lucy, what do you think sunrise means?”

  “Sunrise,” I said, “is when the sun is rising.

  “Then there’s the problem,” he said. “Wherever you’re from, you folks use ‘sunrise’ wrong. ‘Sunrise’ means the first hour-mark after the sun rises.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “No, your definition doesn’t make any sense,” said Christine. “When the sun is rising, it’s dawn. Sunrise is after the sun is risen.”

  “Do you even hear yourself? ‘When the sun is rising-’ how is that not sunrise?”

  “Because it’s not!”

  “But yesterday you were here at sunrise!”

  “No, we were here at dawn!”

  “Enough,” Al boomed over us. “It was an unfortunate miscommunication. We’ll make sure to specify next time.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Christine took a deep breath to calm herself before speaking again.

  “So, Lucy, did you sleep well last night?”

  “Not particularly,” I said. “I was a bit rushed because I thought I had to be here by sunrise.”

  Admittedly, restarting that argument was not the smartest thing I could have done there, but it was at least a little bit funny watching Christine’s face turn red.

  The trip in the Dungeon was less eventful but almost as tedious as the previous day’s excursion had been. The other three lightened up on the obvious statements and pointless advice, but we were still on the third floor, so nothing there posed any kind of real threat to us. We blew through a dozen rooms in an hour and finished off the final boss– an enormous, three-headed tiger– in under a minute, emerging in a wonderful mood, the argument from earlier gone.

  “That was amazing!” exclaimed Christine. “I knew we were stronger than before, but I never thought the third floor would be so easy!”

  “That’s what happens when you level up, I guess,” said Pierre, hugging his wife. “I think with Lucy, we might finally be able to tackle the fourth floor.”

  “We could try right now,” I said.

  “No,” said Al.

  “Aw, c’mon, Al,” said Christine. “We just beat the third in like an hour! We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “We prepared for the third floor, not the fourth.”

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  “Potato, tomato,” she said. “The preparations are the same either way, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “We didn’t plan for the fourth floor,” he said. “The fourth floor is too different. We can’t go in just ‘cause we’re in a good mood. Pierre?”

  “Hey, don’t ask me,” he replied, trying not to look into Christine’s pleading eyes. “It’s true we didn’t prepare for the 4th, but Christine’s right; It still wouldn’t change much. I don’t really care one way or the other. I’ll go with whatever you decide?”

  “Lucy?” begged Alphonse. “It’s the first rule of adventurin’. Don’t tackle somethin’ you’re not prepared for. We really shouldn’t.”

  I, being the reckless fool I was at the time, ignored his pleas.

  “We’ll be fine. I packed extra supplies in my [Inventory]. Even if we get stuck down there for a while, it won’t matter. We should strike while the iron’s hot.”

  Al looked between us, the last rays of hope leaving his eyes when they settled on Pierre, who shrugged as Christine clung to his arm.

  “Fine,” he sighed. “But no charging in. If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it right!”

  “Yes, sir!” said Christine with a mock salute. “Now, hurry up, let’s go!”

  She practically dragged Pierre down the staircase while Al and I followed at a more subdued pace.

  “Why is she so excited?” I asked.

  Al sighed again. “Finishin’ the fourth floor’s sort of a rite of passage for Bizet Adventurers.”

  “Is that all? That doesn’t seem-”

  “‘S’not really my place to say,” he said. “She’s got her reasons. If you stick around, she’ll tell you ‘em eventually.”

  I didn’t respond. I think we both knew that I wouldn’t be sticking around. Even if he didn’t know my long-term plans, he still saw how fast my growth was, and I hadn’t exactly made my disinterest in a permanent relationship a secret. He looked to the ground with a melancholy expression, and I got the distinct impression that there was still more he wanted to say, but we soon joined the others at the bottom of the stairs and got caught up in Christine’s infectious mood as we made our final preparations.

  The fourth floor continued the trend from the other floors of getting cleaner and nicer each time. The walls were a clean, almost-white stone and the ceiling was arched, and featured chandeliers every fifty feet or so. The floor was made of the same stone, but was covered with most of an old, worn carpet that ran along the center aisle. If not for the foul taste of the air and the lingering scent of rot, I could almost imagine I was in an abandoned castle, rather than a Dungeon.

  The first group of monsters we came across were a pair of enormous lobsters with equally huge scorpion tails. They were strong, and their carapaces were tough, but they were slow, and stupid. I was able to incapacitate them almost immediately by using [Pitfall] to create holes under their feet, allowing Pierre and Al to finish them off without any trouble.

  The next battle was similarly easy. A winged spider the size of my old apartment had made its nest in a room that had once been a library, covering the whole area with its sticky and highly flammable webbing. We didn’t even have to fight that one. All we did was hold the door shut as it was cremated on a pyre of its own making.

  Not all the encounters ended so easily. One of the rooms we encountered was littered with cages housing winged dogs. I almost felt sorry for them, until one of them teleported out of its cage and bit Al in the leg. From there it was chaos. Only Al finished unscathed, and that was only by merit of him wearing full plate armor.

  To make matters worse, the wounds were almost certainly infected, with all the rotten blood that had been flying everywhere. It took four hours and a quarter of our potion supply to get everyone fully treated. I felt a bit guilty accepting the potions, knowing I didn’t need them, but with how much we had over-prepared, it wasn’t a big deal. I could always pay them back for the cost once we left.

  Al suggested we go back after this incident. We had suffered injuries, and though the potions had patched us up, we wouldn’t be at 100% until we saw a priest, and on top of that, it was already late in the afternoon, and the sun would have set by the time we returned. We were more amenable to his suggestion this time, but in the end, he was outvoted again, and we instead set up camp for the night.

  Living with Anatoly, I had almost forgotten that normal people needed to sleep. The old elf slept of course, but he was so nonchalant about the fact that I didn’t that it had slipped my mind that it was odd. I opted for one of the middle two shifts on watch duty, to break up the monotony of pretending to sleep, and spent the rest of the night praying that a monster would wander in so I could get up and move around.

  That did not happen, unfortunately. It was not impossible for the Dungeon’s denizens to wander the halls, but being undead, they had no incentive to. They did not need to eat, and they did not feel boredom and were content to sit like statues in their rooms until someone else entered.

  In the morning, Pierre woke up just as well as I expected him too, based on our prior conversations, while Al got out a small magic stove and started preparing breakfast. I went off to a corner to “do my business” and took a swig from a blood-filled bottle given to me by Anatoly to top myself up on Satiety before following the smell of bacon back.

  I’ve mostly gotten over it, but from time to time, I do occasionally curse Pride for enhancing my olfactory sense so much. It had helped me a few times, but most of the time, it was just a low form of torture. She could have at least modified it like she had my tongue so that I wouldn’t find human foods so alluring. The bacon still smelled as heavenly as it ever had, but for the brief moment it touched my tongue while I pretended to eat, I was subjected to the flavors one would expect to find in the dripping puddle at the bottom of an well-used and unwashed refrigerator. I’m sure she thought it was funny and was laughing at me as I tried not to make faces while I “ate.” I hadn’t fully mastered the skill of fake-eating by this time, so with every bite I took, it took all my willpower not to spit it out and retch.

  We reached the boss room around noon after an uneventful, event-full morning of fighting some of the more boring mobs we’d seen. They were all simple and brutish and killing them had just been a matter of hitting them until they died. I enjoy hack-and-slashers as much as anyone else, but when the things I’m hacking and slashing spray me back with their putrid innards, it’s hard to be enthusiastic. Even in my position as the mage in the back of the group, I couldn’t avoid some of the bigger splashes, and [Hemokinesis] didn’t register most of it as blood, so I couldn’t deflect it either.

  Al was coated in the sludge, his armor more black than silver now, and he smelled worse than the monsters we were fighting, but he nor the others seemed to care. I envied them and their human noses.

  Unlike on the first three floors, the fourth and fifth floor bosses did not vary. No matter which group of Adventurers entered, or which route they took, they would end up at the same door leading into the same room that housed the same boss. This should have made both easy opponents, as the countless Adventurers that had gone before us would have figured out all their weaknesses and the optimal strategies for defeating them. That was partly the case, but the monsters were so strong compared to the rest of the Dungeons that it still wasn’t a done deal.

  The fourth floor’s boss was the animated remains of the former master of the castle and the creator of the chimerae. Legend had it that he had not limited his experiments to just other creatures, and even did work on himself in an ill-advised attempt to achieve immortality. Whether the legend was true or not did not matter. Dungeons are based on public perception, not reality, and unfortunately for us, public perception held the ancient necromancer’s skills in quite high regard.

  Our foe was a skeletal monstrosity thrice my height and bones that shone with a metallic gleam. It wielded a sword as tall as itself in one oversized hand and a longbow tha must have been made of an entire pine tree in the other with a third, smaller arm sticking out of its shoulder to draw the string. It had no quiver, but whenever it drew the string back, a small spatial tear would appear, and from it, an arrow emerged to nock onto the bow.

  Even knowing all of this going in, the battle almost ended the second we entered, as we narrowly avoided being skewered like a kebab on its first arrow. A moment later, Al ducked as he nearly got an involuntary beard (and neck) trim. The battle was precarious for a time after that, until we finally caught a break when Al’s ax found its way into the bow. It switched to a second sword after that, and while it was more dangerous for Al then, it was much easier for Pierre and I, not needing to dance all around the room to avoid its arrows.

  Unfortunately, whatever metal its bones were made of was too strong for my spells at the time. Even my Earth spells, which were supposed to have the most offensive power, just bounced off it. In my limited training, I had opted for practicality over firepower, and hadn’t gotten around to learning any big spells like Clovis’ [Fire Tornado] yet, and so in order to not be completely useless, I switched to more of a supporting role.

  I blinded it, created holes in the ground at its feet, and even managed a few full-body illusions of Al at different angles. Whether my tactics had any real effect could be subject to some debate, but regardless, after fifteen minutes or so, we whittled down the durability of its legs enough that it was starting to stumble, and its attacks were getting sloppier.

  It was around then that I had one of my worst brilliant ideas ever: I could use magic to try to manipulate its sword. I had already tested that magic worked on metal just as well as it worked on any other substance, but it had never crossed my mind that I could use it on my enemies’ weapons until that battle.

  Against normal enemies, such a tactic was unfeasible. Something about proximity to other people makes magic more difficult to cast, so trying to manipulate an enemy’s arms and armor is usually a bad idea. However, this chimeric skeleton’s weapon was so long that its tip was far enough away from its main body that the penalty was negligible. I waited for it to swing one of its swords in my direction again, and locked onto it with my willpower. I was not strong enough to control the entire sword, but I could jerk it a little bit, causing it to slip out of its hands.

  Then, I was reminded of the laws of physics.

  Before I had time to react, the sword had run me through and all but cut me in half. My legs were connected to my body by no more than an inch of flesh on my left hip, and I hit the ground looking like an eccentric zippo lighter.

  I vaguely recall hearing the others screaming my name, but I was in so much pain that I didn’t register it. It’s a miracle that I even had the mental capacity to pull my two halves together so that [Rapid Regeneration] could do its work.

  When I came to, the sounds of battle had stopped, and all that remained were the sounds of gut-wrenching sobs from the center of the room. Thinking they were crying over me, I sat up, preparing to surprise and comfort them, and I was instead met with the sight of Pierre and Al’s backs as they knelt over Christine’s lifeless form.