Everyone was looking at her. Even Gula. Though the orc seemed to be less expectant, more curious.

“We’re going for the panacea,” she finally decided. “If things get too dangerous, we can always retreat.”

Jaclyn didn’t currently have any relatives in dire need of healing, and judging by the fact that no one had even tried to push toward the potion, no one else currently needed it either.

And that meant that it was available as a bri- ... as an incentive. Like Harper had already had, the availability of magical healing was something that could easily be used to convince the people in power to funnel even more resources and manpower toward the burgeoning supernatural agency.

Besides, the booklet had marked that part as “unfinished, may be harder the next time”, and then clarified that the unranked creatures would likely have their powers soon. That should make it much easier. If it was true. But Gula dismissed the likelihood of that happening as being infinitesimally small.

***

“Whatever this Dungeon core’s origin may be, it is a creature with knowledge about the multiverse. Even where the compact does not hold sway, Dungeons who lie are destroyed. They may lay traps, they may mislead with their architecture, but these beings shall not make false statements. When something is clarified, it must remain true,” The orc explained.

That had basically been Thomas’ thinking. There were plenty of sayings, in all manner of languages, empathizing how someone who lied was unlikely to be believed even when they were telling the truth. And a Dungeon who got a reputation for playing games, especially when those games killed people, would be perceived as a massive threat and destroyed.

Of course, that required the Dungeon to get caught, people could die inside even when fully informed, so a full party wipe with plausible deniability was doable.

But even if Thomas thought he could get away with it, he wouldn’t try anything like that unless his targets were deliberately aiming to kill him. For example, the creatures in the “off limits” section of the Dungeon, the last few underground floors beneath the mammal hall, were listed on the loot tables, but with wildly misleading names and listed loot. An apparent oversight, but one he had very deliberately made.

All that being said, though, even if he were inclined to try, he wouldn’t get away with any shenanigans. Elias wouldn’t let him. They got along just fine nowadays, having decided that while luring anything into the Dungeon to be killed was normally a huge honking red flag, Thomas knew where the line was, the difference between dumb animals and actual sapient beings.

The group outside made a few plans, during the course of which he learned all their names. The kid was Granger, and apparently, now a mage of some stripe, while the completely new guy, Harper, was a healer despite looking like the walking wall of muscle and cheap suits that served as the disposable bodyguard in many a movie.

Oh, this would be cool. Thomas had remembered how quickly the Inspector had grown during her first Dungeon run. Gaining superhuman power by leaps and bounds. It was incredible to witness, though he wished he could feel it himself. As incredible as his new existence as a Dungeon was, it didn’t let him pull off anything like it.

***

The plan was simple. Go in, deal with the creatures she knew to be in the entrance hall, a setup that hadn’t changed, as far as she knew. And then, scout out the new section. Simple. Clean. No need to overcomplicate it.

Jaclyn was the first through the door as always, fearlessly stepping out from beneath the mezzanine into the room proper, carefully making sure to step out right underneath the tiger she could hear creeping around up there.

The big cat leaped down at her, as she knew it would, but it was no longer anything near as threatening as it had been before. Not when she could literally snap its spine like a twig with one hand and was so tough it could barely injure her. A straight bite to the back of the neck with all the force it could bring to bear would still be a threat, but she had no intention of letting it get anywhere close to her vitals.

Jaclyn spun and backhanded the beast, throwing it to the side where it lay, stunned. A backhand was a very dismissive strike, one that barely did any damage, but damage hadn’t been the goal. Redirecting it had been.

Gula already had her Halcyon projection out in case it was needed, however, this had been for Granger’s benefit. He desperately needed to level so that he could increase his mana pool and actually contribute more than two fireballs in the entire Dungeon run. And that meant that when he used his magic, he needed to get kills.

An apple-sized orb of flame flew through the air, Granger’s underhand toss surprisingly accurate as it landed right on the big cat’s stomach where it detonated with a soft “whoomph”. The shockwave was nothing to write home about, even a normal human would have likely survived a hit like that, but the flames that were spread by the impact … burning to the death was an ugly, ugly, way to die.

However, she had different priorities, namely, the dinosaur standing at the far end of the hall. A camarasaurus with an elastic tail that it liked cracking like a whip, with complete freedom with regards to its length. Her target.

Thunder cracked behind Jaclyn as Gula’s Halcyon fried the second tiger while the dinosaur came rushing towards her, ground quaking beneath its feat without any magic at all necessary to cause the effect. It was just that heavy.

The dino’s tail cracked through the air, further elongating as it passed the point where it was closest to the columns, going straight for Jaclyn’s neck. Just like last time. But the end result would be very different. No getting thrown all over the place, no winding up dumped in front of a hippo, and she wouldn’t lose her replacement gun either.

She blocked it with her forearm, causing the ludicrously elastic tail to wrap around it, while she manifested the badger head over her own to protect herself from the very tip of the appendage before it bounced off her cheek.

Jaclyn used her right hand to grasp the tail, ensuring that even if the dinosaur somehow managed to unwind the limb, it wouldn’t be able to save it.

A shimmering badger paw manifested over her left hand as she punched out at the tail right above where she’d grabbed it, claws punching clean through. So she punched it again, and her third strike was purely perfunctory, ripping through ragged strands of flesh that would likely have snapped anyway when the dinosaur retracted its tail. Which it did at that point, dotting the wall red with droplets of blood.

Jaclyn charged, leaping over the follow-up strike that had been aimed at her legs, only to get smacked by the camarasaurus’ head. She used that as her chance to grab its neck, wrapping her arms around it until she could clamp her legs around its throat. That was when she let go with her arms and just started punching, claws manifesting and tearing into whatever part she deemed most vulnerable.

The first couple of strikes were bad, biting primarily into muscle, but from there, she managed to refine her attacks, ripping open the windpipe and several major blood vessels that likely served as the equivalent of the jugular and carotid on dinosaur regardless of what they were named.

Somehow, the dinosaur collapsed in a matter of seconds, faster than she’d expected, trapping her underneath its neck for a brief second until she could push herself back out.

“I hope you have a change of clothes,” Harper commented dryly as the others approached, with Granger nodding along.

Jaclyn sighed. The blood would disintegrate along with the body, but this Dungeon wasn’t clean enough that she could roll around on the floor and not pick up some dirt. And it would only get worse with every fight.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Cleaning magic,” she responded, fully aware of the fact that she didn’t have the mana to keep casting it during the dive, she’d have to put up with it until the end.

Then, she glanced over at Granger. “Did you get a Level?”

“Yep, all points into magic,” he replied.

The newly acquired space in an enlarged mana pool was filled when the points were applied, so he’d not only just doubled the number of his available spells when it was full, but he’d also gained two fireballs’ worth of mana in the moment.

In addition, mana regenerated as a percentage of the pool, with around 95% percent being returned over the course of an hour, so he’d also doubled his regeneration. Granted, there were certain grand, powerful, spells that would reduce the regeneration, with the exact amount and duration of the reduction depending on the spell in question, but that was a moot point since the Worldstrider Tribe hadn’t had any spells like that to teach him.

So he did the same thing she had on her first Dungeon run, when she’d gotten her first few Levels. Generally, some degree of balance was required when growing, spreading the available points out across various Stats.

For example, one could not get the full benefits of a high Body without sufficient Mind, which enhanced reflexes and granted the level of control needed to move at the maximum potential speed a newly superhuman physique allowed for.

A high investment into Magic was also less useful with just a baseline human brain, since being able to think faster and multitask better directly translated into a higher volume of spell output.

And while a low Spirit might not directly impact one’s abilities, but it did severely limit the strength of one’s powers. Sure, overwhelming physical power might be a strength all its own, but powers made a huge difference.

For example, Jaclyn might have had nearly as many points in Spirit as she did in Body, but since for her, Spirit strengthened the projected claws she used to attack, so she actually did more damage with this distribution.

However, those were considerations for the far future. When you started out, it was important to improve in a way that let you reasonably contribute, balance would come later. For her, that had meant gaining the strength to injure dinosaurs and hippos with her bare hands. And for Granger, this meant boosting his magic to the point where he was only useful every thirty minutes or so.

Jaclyn turned around when a rustling sound reached her ears, being faced with several bales of what looked like dinosaur leather. It probably wouldn’t be that impressive overall, being no bulletproof wonder substance or the like, but it would make for a nice tangible benefit from diving the Dungeon. Who knew how long it would take before the novelty of dinosaur-made products wore off?

It’d make for nice “gifts”, she didn’t mind giving up the leather as she could always get more.

She pointed down the left-hand corridor, which currently held a giant sloth and a wooly rhino.

“Harper, watch out for those things. The rhino’s aggressive, but unranked. But the sloth can stretch its arms when it punches. It could probably reach the cafe entrance from where it’s standing.”

“Why isn’t it attacking?” he wondered.

“This Dungeon has chosen to set rules for itself,” Gula explained. “No creatures shall confront delvers not inside their rooms.”

“Huh.”

Then, he pointed at her right arm. “Can I heal that?”

Jaclyn glanced down at the slight redness on her bare arm, where she had been unable to manifest a shield as she’d needed to properly grasp the tail.

“This is nothing,” she said. Literally nothing. This wasn’t even the kind of damage a rubber band might do when snapped against a normal human’s skin.

“Yeah, but I need to level,” Harper pointed out.

“Can’t you just go to a hospital?” Granger suggested.

“Yeah, he can go to a hospital with a bag full of medieval herbal medicines, unproven, unlicensed, claiming they’re magical. We’d wind up having to get him out of the loony bin,” Jaclyn pointed out as she approached the healer and held out her arm. “Is this going to take long?”

“Nope,” Harper said, reaching into one of the many pockets on his utility belt and producing a salve that smelled like someone combined half a spice rack with a pine-scented candle and Everclear. He dipped a finger in and gently smeared a small dollop across the non-injury and it vanished in a matter of seconds.

Granted, injuries requiring actual medical intervention would likely take longer than that to heal, but it was still impressive enough to see.

“Let’s head into the new area. Carefully,” Jaclyn ordered and once again took the lead.

The corridor there was much the same as it had been before, a hallway with marine fossils lining the walls. It was pretty, but also highlighted the big difference between this place, and the hall she’d left literal seconds ago. The transition from slaughter to peaceful academia left her feeling a little weird.

However, the sight at the end of this particular corridor made that disappear like morning dew under a hot sun. Her strongest memory of the geology section was how terrified Eve had been of the Earthquake simulator. But even so, she was damn sure it hadn’t looked like that before. Like a jungle.

Or, perhaps, a mangrove forest of some kind, considering that she could see that water had replaced the ground.

“I’m stepping in first, if something steps out, Gula, use lighting on it,” she ordered. Harper had a gun and Granger had his fireballs, but she figured the projected mini thunderbird was the most likely to be able to strike past her without hitting her.

She stepped right up to the entrance, taking a look around before stepping inside. There were more hippos in the water, along with spikes, but it didn’t look like there was any way for the big lugs to get onto the walkway. They would only be a threat if someone fell in. But chances were that this room had some way to make staying on the rather wide walkway more difficult than it really should be. She couldn’t quite tell where the issues lay, but the black shapes flitting through the vines gave her some hints.

And based on the fact that the Dungeon’s newest monster was a super spider monkey, she assumed that these were spider monkeys too. Would they jump on them and start clawing at their faces, or just throw shit? As in, literally?

Jaclyn grimaced as she remembered some of the various things she knew about monkeys and their methods of self-defense.

She took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the walkway … and a coconut smacked against the back of her skull with a loud thunk before hitting the ground behind her and fully cracking open.

“Ow!” she yelped, sheer shock and surprise shattering her usual self-control as she whirled, looking up in time to see another coconut teleporting into a monkey’s hands and getting chucked straight at her. That little wanker might not have been human, but she swore he was laughing at her.

Her fist smashed it to pieces before it could hit her, the projected claws protecting her knuckles, though she still had to dodge the follow-up spray of coconut water. That had been an utter waste, she should have just gotten the hell out of the way.

And then, something else flew at her from behind. She whirled and ducked, watching some kind of extremely pointy nut fly past her head. But it was only the first of many.

A whole lot of monkeys, all throwing stuff at her from every direction. Admittedly, the sheer amount of foliage around meant that they couldn’t target her from halfway across the room, but it was still a lot. Enough to injure and eventually kill a normal human, and potentially enough to make her fall off, into the water below.

She hurried back out again.

“Granger, throw a fireball at a monkey, see how flammable those vines are,” she ordered. He might be a good weapon against the monkeys, but if those vines burned easily, he could easily wind up suffocating them all purely by accident.

A single fireball flashed through the air and a monkey screeched as it died, while the vines just smoldered. Well, that settled it.

***

Thomas watched as the four delvers carefully entered the first room of the geology section, cursing whenever they were hit by a nut.

Inspector Abrams and Gula the orc were too tough to be hurt by the pointy alien nut he’d found in the jungle but the coconuts were painful.

However, the others were in much more damage. The healer’s assault rifle roared in brief bursts, annihilating monkeys that were close enough to throw stuff at him, while the mage was careful to incinerate any monkey that tried to get above them. After all, coconuts were too heavy to throw properly, but they could be dropped.

Everyone was bleeding to a certain degree, but fine. No one was badly injured, and no one fell off, even though it was close in a couple of places, with feet coming within mere centimeters of the edge. Even so, this was just the start. And watching humans run from a band of tiny widdle monkeys throwing nuts had a certain comedic element.

***

They took shelter in the hollow sphere that had been in this room before for a moment, taking a breather, only to run the last two exposed meters from the main hall into the upper floor, leaving the room of nutty hail.

“Like taking candy from a baby,” Harper grinned as he spread ointment on his various scratches. “We’ll have to grab some riot shields next time, but …”

He trailed off when he saw everyone else staring at him.

“First, this place is alive. Jinxes in here is the Dungeon reacting to insults,” Jaclyn pointed out. “And second, have you ever actually tried taking a little kid’s candy? It ain’t easy.”

“I thought only Disney villains did that,” Granger threw her a mock-horrified look.

“When Eve was really young, she couldn’t have chocolate or things would get … ugly,” Jaclyn began. “But older relatives either forget or ignore it when they’re told not to give chocolate to the baby. So guess who got to be the bad guy and had to take the sweets away?

“Babies are crazy strong, you really wouldn’t expect them to have a grip like that. And when you do get the candy, that’s when the waterworks start. Seriously, people talk about torture being inhumane, but that look is psychological warfare that should be against the Geneva Convention!”

***

The humans laughed at that, but from above, a Dungeon Core watched, considering. Thinking about how to weaponize this new idea of his. Psychological warfare, huh …