“I thought Elaya was the hero?” I responded blankly.

My mind started to work again, even though I had taken lots of blows. With a few white spells still taking effect, even as we spoke, I was patching myself up again.

“You know Elaya?” She turned away and knocked down another wave of demons, knocking them aside with ridiculous ease.

“Yes, we’re… um…” If I told her Elaya was my slave and technically my monster pet, it would be bad. “She’s a friend.”

Her eyes flickered. “She’s dead. It would have been before you were born.”

“It’s true! I know a lot about her. Ask any questions! I can answer it!”

“What’s the name of her child?” Xin demanded.

“Child? Edward!”

“Anyone would know that!” She growled, but then, a moment later, she let out an irritated sound and pulled away. “Come! If you want to live!”

I didn’t see how she appeared, but she didn’t run toward the entrance at all. Instead, she went back into the keep. I knew where she was going; so, I followed quickly without concern. We were heading to the safe room. Of course, I had a lot of things running through my mind, but as we were being pursued by the demons, it wasn’t the time to ask.

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The demons were in hot pursuit up until we reached the safe room. I went straight to touch the kiosk, but Xin held up her hand and stopped me. A moment later, I heard a yell from outside.

“Where did they go?”

“They vanished!”

“Dungeon created creatures don’t see safe rooms. They are truly safe in every sense of the word.”

I remembered back to the first time I entered the dungeon as our group from Chalm desperately tried to barricade the entrance thinking the zombies would follow us in. It turned out that in general, that was something that couldn’t happen. Well, I’d probably still close the door, at least. It seemed like dungeon rules just existed to point out the exceptions.

Xin had also told me something else when she revealed that. She had told me that she was a real person. I had thought that Xin was some kind of creation of the dungeon. This dungeon had some relation to Aberis, so it made sense that some approximation of Xin, his mother, might appear in here. Yet, the mother he said he had killed was alive and before me. I found it difficult to believe. Part of that reason was that she wasn’t Osterian at all!

“You’re not… wait… do you know Greggar?”

I wasn’t sure why I went with that question first. It just occurred to me that if she knew about the safe rooms and was traveling by them, then she might have some knowledge about him.

“So, you’ve taken some of my challenges.”

“Your challenges?” I let out a noise of surprise.

She raised an eyebrow. “Princess Xin Greggar, of the former country of Osteria.”