"Finally, here is my chance. The left side is mine!"

Emi yelled, rushing ahead before I could stop her.

"I told you, this isn't a game! You can get hurt or killed." I shouted after her but it was no use. And what if I was wrong? The rules were different inside the dungeon as Addas explained it. And he expected us to level up before facing him, I found no better way to word it.

"Come on, Nat, it's not like we have any other choice." She acted way too enthusiastic about this regardless. And what was this power? Before he flew off he returned the thousand monsters already slain by Aoi to life with a flick of his finger. I heard about necromancy and how the Cranta Church banned it. But the Elder herself turned out to be a practitioner too. I hoped she wasn't on his level. "If you remain weak, or let them swarm us, we'll die. Might as well embrace the grind."

She didn't have to encourage Cath either. The paladin looked frustrated since we ran into each other in the dungeon. She could no longer use the miracles provided by her guardian deity.

I didn't know how she fought since I wasn't lucky enough to see her do it on the surface. From the witnesses, I got an image of a fierce warrior with unexpected twists up her sleeve. She was no more than a regular fighter here, although I still envied her moves.

"If the dragon said the truth, hold back this time." She glanced at the Saipole royalty before rushing straight into the enemy swarm. It was a gruesome sight, they were all bloodied, making mechanical movements. Some of their limbs broke, but the deity's orders were absolute.

He was the main opponent here, and I only had time to prepare against him while he played with the others. The plushie already had the seal sewn into it and I finished the restricting rune too. I needed to pour all my mana into it, hoping that was enough to hold back the Dragon God.

"We are here too," Gitaut noted as if he read my mind. Yes, I needed all their magicules and then some. But who would cast the spell if we knocked ourselves out and the mana exhaustion kicked in?

"How about we start pouring our magicules into that thing, all four of us. Leave only enough to keep fighting for a while?" Omerta suggested, firing off lightning at the monster horde approaching us. "If Emi's right, and we get stronger with each enemy down, we could use that to regain some of our energy."

"It worked with Aoi, look at her go." The Princess noted, nodding towards the blue-robed girl in the back row. Our formation shifted to face the swarms instead of the minotaurs. They suspended their attack, which was such a cliche for the big bad guy. He wanted to intimidate us, refusing to kill us outright. I had to cling to this with all I had.

"I um, do feel much stronger," Aoi confirmed, examining her arms as if looking for a visible change. "There is no way I could have defeated all these monsters before, and I'm not even tired. But there is the dungeon's insane mana too, it could be a coincidence. The fairies never intervened."

"And they won't now," Ember claimed with a smug grin, standing by her firewall. "I wiped them all out with a single firestorm, it made me feel better too, but these guys are on another level."

She nodded back at the minotaur formation that remained after Addas disappeared. I didn't have Gitaut's ability to gauge their strength, but they sure looked menacing. Unlike the plushie, I should have worked on it instead of looking around. Talking about stuffed toys: Gadurien floated as a cat, eyeing the minotaur formation.

"At least give me a proper body damn it, this is so humiliating for a god." She fumed but at least didn't act hostile towards us even after the Dragon God left. Elizabeth looked relieved once the deity left her body for the stuffed cat. Her concentration paid off too. She whispered the Appenon guardian's true name in a quieter moment. Now she prepared to fight the hordes in a melee. "Don't expect me to give you my miracles, girl. You wasted your one opportunity to become my priest."

"I'm the Last Princess of Cranta." She scoffed, unsheating her sword, and rushing after the paladin. "I will manage it somehow."

What a gathering of characters it was. The orc and beastmen magicians and human fighters. A literal deity trapped in a stuffed toy, and my sister from another world in a homunculus body. And regardless of their different goals, they had to work together to survive. The undead monsters surrounded us and even attacked the minotaur formation. They pushed them back without destroying them, acting like a live barrier.

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As if they wanted to force-feed us their exp. Was this an actual game of some sort? We could still all die so I couldn't waste more time on the god-trap. I channeled my mana into it and the other three soon joined me. Ember and Omerta had more magicules than before. They generated a whirlpool around the stuffed toy, but Gitaut surprised everyone.

He focused on navigating us and finding the dangers in the dungeon, rather than fighting. Yet compared to the girls, he had a tremendous amount of mana. And I couldn't complain either. I had a lot of power to spare for someone who recently learned to use magic with my cheat crystal. The dragon toy glowed brighter than the sun this dungeon lacked, the rune about to burst with energy.

"Oh, now we're talking." The other plushie nodded, her button eyes projecting mixed emotions. She looked satisfied to me but also intimidated. I put no restrictions on her new shell, but she hated it. "That's not something he should be able to break, but you could try a second one. In case the rune gets damaged somehow."

"I have no strength left," I noted, feeling dizzy. And they told me not to use all my mana at once, but I overdid it as usual. "Are you sure defeating the monsters will help us regain some?"

"I'm stronger already," Emi claimed, fighting like a madman, dead center of the enemy swarm. I didn't realize she rushed far forward, disregarding her safety to slice up creatures. I never saw her like this before, and I don't mean her inhumane strength or the moves she pulled off. A lunatic grin distorted her face, and I never thought my sister could scare me but she did now.

We used to play some games together when she behaved like this, but that was different. This was her real aggression in the real world.

"How on Earth..." I tried to comprehend, but I noticed a few monsters flanking her. I fired off a magic arrow using the last morsels of my strength, and the creatures disintegrated. They were weaker than they looked, but I expected to pass right out, yet I felt less exhausted than before the spell. "Wait, did they burst?"

"Ah, don't feel bad about them." The shaman told me, his body enveloped in a strange glow. "They aren't real creatures. They weren't born from parents or grew up. Imagine them as bubbles created from mana, when they burst, the magicules will flock to you."

"That was weird and specific, but he's right." Omerta nodded, dispatching a few monsters on her own. "The Dragon God gathered the weakest creatures with the biggest mana potential. Their whole purpose is to feed the Dungeon Core and create a strong follower for him. But this isn't like natural selection."

"As I said, it's so we can grind our levels." My sister repeated, covered in the blood of her enemies. Since when did she become such an MMORPG nerd? We tried a few of those games while I was still alive in our world, but she told me they were boring. She seemed more than eager to draw parallels with them in this situation. "It's like I'm bursting with power, it's pretty crazy."

I couldn't protest any longer. We needed all the tools to defeat the Dragon God, or at least find a way out of there. Our small group cut through this horde like a hot knife through butter. I couldn't lag either but restricted myself to the beasts who threatened my sister. Even if they couldn't make a dent in her defense, the one-sided massacre felt justified.

"Make sure you use less force to burst their bubble than what's inside it, and you'll feel your mana replenish." Omerta gave a tip, firing off her lowest-level spells to great effect. We pushed Cat-Gadurien and Aoi at the rear of our formation. It was to ensure they didn't steal or exp as Emi put it, and to keep an eye on the minotaurs behind us.

They each went through similar massacres before, so they must have been tough. We had to make do with what we had, splitting a thousand monsters amongst ourselves, which made me wonder. What if they each killed a thousand and we shared their mana?

We wiped clean the arena before I knew it. That meant the answer to my question could come soon, but Addas had different plans. He returned right as the last monster got minced up by my sister, and made his presence known by slow clapping. We all turned to face him, and I squeezed the dragon plushie, ready to release the spell if he came closer.

"See, it wasn't that hard, right?" He had this amused grin, walking on the ground this time. "Let's see how far you have come?"

His strike was sudden, but Gitaut prepared for it. The barrier was up before I thought about raising one, and instead, I only added my magicules to support him. Emi was right, I felt refreshed and brimming with mana again, even though I killed the least undead.

But I regained enough strength to block this purple blast with the shaman's aid. I didn't even break a sweat, but the pressure kept building. Addas snapped his finger, and his beam disappeared. He laughed.

"Not bad, but I held back a bit. I don't want to end it too soon, because I haven't had a chance to fight in earnest since I took over this dungeon." He kept walking towards us, reaching the minotaur formation.

"What do you expect to achieve with this?" The cat plush asked, comical as it sounded. "You can't destroy me, only this shell, and you don't seem to lack the power, so what's the point of killing them?"

"Killing? No, it's pure entertainment." Addas claimed, opening his arms. "Breaking them, enslaving strong opponents is much more fun than destroying them. And I got bored here. It was only a decade for you, but to me, they felt eons. It's time to return to the surface, and they will provide me with a sample of what people can do nowadays."