Lowe sat up with a sharp gasp, like a diver breaking the surface after forgetting oxygen was a thing.
His eyes darted around, wild and unfocused, before settling on Karolen.
For her part, she was looking like she’d seen a ghost—or more accurately, like she’d seen a corpse suddenly decide it had better things to do.
His sudden movement had startled her. Karolen had been kneeling over his lifeless body, tears carving streaks through the grime and blood on her face. She flinched violently, recoiling as though from a ghost, her hand brushing against her blade. It clattered against the cavern floor, the metallic sound echoing briefly before the weapon dissipated into nothingness.
“What the—Lowe?” she stammered. “You were—”
“Dead. Yeah, got that,” Lowe said. “It didn’t take.”
Carefully, he turned his head left, then right, testing for any lingering stiffness or surprises. Next, he flexed his fingers, opening and closing his hands slowly. So far, so good. Everything seemed to be in working order, no sudden pangs or ominous clicks—just the faint, surreal sensation of having recently been dead.
Which, on its own, was quite a vibe.
A small, glowing countdown ticked in the corner of his vision: 59:55. The bell-long healing lockout. Right. That was the trade-off for not staying permanently dead. A bit stingy, sure, but when you’re gambling with house money, griping feels like an ungrateful waste of breath—especially when you’ve just been given a second shot at using it.
“To be honest, I’m feeling surprisingly chipper,” he said, swinging his legs around and rising to his feet. The motion was startlingly smooth, almost unnervingly so, considering he’d been a corpse all of two moments ago. “Turns out dying’s the best nap I’ve had in years. Who knew?”
Karolen stared up at him, her face a mix of shock, relief, and the faintest hint of irritation. “You—you were gone. I thought—” She shook her head, as if trying to shake loose the memory of his lifeless body, then paused, her expression shifting as something else clicked. “Wait. How the hell are you cracking jokes? You just—Lowe, you died.”
“Yeah, yeah, tragic stuff, I’m sure,” Lowe said, brushing non-existent dust off his coat with exaggerated nonchalance. “But I’m back now, so let’s stick to the highlights: How much did I miss? Where did the Big Bad wander off to while I was . . . otherwise engaged?”
“You’re impossible.”
“Damn right I am,” he said, dismissing the countdown in his vision. “Also, just a heads up: no healing for the next hour. So, if you were planning on any tender, heroic moments where you slap a potion in my hand and save the day, maybe pencil that in for later.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Yeah, me neither. Just don’t try and heal me for a while—clock’s still ticking on that one. Come on, up you get. We’ve got a fully armoured Dreadnaught with a stolen Dungeon Core to deal with. How about you? Need any boosts, or are you good to go?” Lowe pulled a pastry and a smoothie from his inventory, holding them out like peace offerings. “Here, eat up. Trust me, these’ll sort out anything that ails you. Mylaf’s finest. Practically a breakfast miracle.”
Karolen stared at him, blinking as if her brain hadn’t quite caught up to events. A minute ago, she’d been bracing herself to tell her best friend that Lowe had died in a Dungeon. Now, he was casually offering her snacks.
“Go on,” Lowe said, waggling the croissant at her. “It’s a chocolate one. Best thing you’ll put in your mouth all week.” There was a pause. “Yeah, don’t tell Arebella I said that. Blame that on the resurrection.”
Resigned to the absurdity of it all, Karolen took the croissant (+30% to Critical Hit) and the raspberry smoothie (flat 200 on HP). One bite of buttery, chocolate-laced bliss and a sip of tart sweetness later, she was chewing in stunned silence. Whatever she'd been about to say was effectively neutralised by the pastries’ sheer brilliance.
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Lowe grinned. “Told you.”
When she was finished, Lowe extended a hand. Karolen hesitated for a moment, then took it, allowing him to haul her to her feet. She shook her head as if trying to clear it, muttering under her breath.
Lowe didn’t catch every word, but he was fairly certain “insufferable bastard” made an appearance, wrapped in a tone that teetered somewhere between exasperation and reluctant admiration.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said, “And I missed you too. Now did you see which way the Big Bad went?”
***
According to Karolen, the instant Lowe had exhaled his last, shuddering breath, the Dreadnaught had wasted no time. It had dropped him like last year’s fashions, let out an earth-shaking roar, and with a swing of its massive arm, it had torn a hole straight through the Dungeon wall. Then, without so much of a backward glance, it had disappeared into the night beyond.
“It didn’t even pause,” she said as they carefully navigated the fractured remains of the wall. “One moment it was gloating over your corpse—because, you know, ancient Dreadnaughts just have to get in a last word—and the next, it’s all ‘so long, Dungeon, time to see the world.’ It didn’t hesitate, didn’t look back—just straight through the wall like a wrecking ball in full sprint.”
Lowe stumbled slightly on a chunk of fallen debris, still trying to shake off the strange, unmoored feeling that came with being yanked back from the dead. “Places to go, people to see, I get it. But didn’t it occur to you to, I don’t know, try and stop it?”
Karolen shot him a glare. “Oh, sure, Lowe. I’ll just whip out my Stop a Rampaging Dreadnaught Skill next time. You know, right after I finish not dying while mourning your dramatic, heroic death. My bad for not keeping up. Preece might have been low Level, but that thing was at least Level 60.”
“Fair point,” Lowe said, stepping cautiously over a piece of shattered masonry. The cool air of Soar was a bit different here—thicker, almost humming with residual energy. The destruction of the museum’s wall had left more than just physical damage; it was like the very fabric of reality had been pulled thin and stitched poorly back together.
If he looked closely, he could see where the Dungeon’ Core’s influence had imposed itself on the structure of Soar Museum. The wall they were passing through hadn’t just crumbled under the Dreadnaught’s assault, it had shifted and stretched, lines of glowing mana hovering midair like frozen lightning bolts. They twisted and warped, forming incomplete patterns that fizzled and sparked before vanishing.
The place where the Dreadnaught had struck the wall gaped open like a festering wound, spilling remnants of magical containment. Grackle Nuroon was going to have a conniption.
The two of them stepped through the hole in the wall, and the moment they crossed the threshold, Lowe felt the subtle, electric snap of their delve coming to an abrupt end.
It was like a taut thread had been cut, leaving the air around them suddenly lighter, less charged. The shared notifications in his periphery—the ones linked to Karolen’s XP, stats, and progress—flickered and disappeared, leaving an odd emptiness in their wake as their party dissolved. It was almost strange after what they had recently been through, like losing the hum of background noise you hadn’t realised you’d gotten used to.
“Yeah, that’s about right,” Lowe said.
“What’s about right?”
“No rewards,” he said. “We went through all that—death, resurrection, Dreadnaughts busting out into the city—and we get jack-all for actually completing the Dungeon. Where’s the loot? The XP? The celebratory ‘you did it’ fanfare? Obviously, I’m pretty new at this whole delving thing, but I’m fairly sure I got all sort of goodies when I finished my previous run in the Undercity.”
“Lowe, you died. That is the literal opposite of finishing a Dungeon.”
“Pfft, technicalities,” he said. “I came back, didn’t I? That’s got to count for something.”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “It counts as you not finishing the Dungeon. It’s not my fault the Dungeon Core - a Core that incidentally has been stolen by a monster we apparently helped break in - wasn’t up for rewarding sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.”
“I’ll have you know that stubbornness is a heroic quality.”
“It really isn’t,” Karolen said. Her gaze shifted back toward the city, where the distant skyline still seemed to tremble from the Dreadnaught’s escape. “Heroics or not, there’s an armoured Dreadnaught stomping around out there now—with a stolen Dungeon Core for dessert. If we thought that thing was bad news inside the Dungeon…”
“You know what?” Lowe said, “I’m not sure that’s going to be a problem.”
“Why not?”
“Because, by the sound of all that fighting, and a bit of familiar swearing, I’d put good gold on it that he Dreadnaught’s just run into a few friends of mine.”