The cavern turned dimmer and dimmer, as all but one of Etienne’s lightning balls vanished. Its flashing blue and white light hurt my eyes, but I didn’t say anything.

I took off my scarf, and sliced it into thinner strips with my sword, as Etienne checked his pockets for spare ammo or flashlight batteries. Etienne helped me wrap up my left arm in the makeshift bandages. Thankfully neither the bite or the scratches were very deep, and the bleeding stopped without me having to take my jacket off and shove bandages (aka my ex-scarf) into the cuts like in those old war movies.

His touch was soft, but distant. Maybe it was just the light, playing tricks as it shifted in and out of existence, but there was a tension, anxiety even to his sharp features. I gently wiped away sweat from his forehead, letting my fingers linger much less than I would have liked in his tightly pulled-back hair. Somewhere in this whole mess he’d had had the time to redo his ponytail, although without gel most of his black curls were inches away from becoming free again.

“I lied earlier.” I spoke, as I pulled my hand, and my bandaged arm away.

“I thought we over that.” Etienne sighed. “I thought, no, you did promise not to hide…” he trailed off, turning around, and sending his orb further into the cavern.

“One of my skills allows me to backtrack through any location.” I ignored whatever he had going on, “Right now it’s not showing anything. I have a strong feeling we will have to confront the dungeon itself again.”

Etienne sighed and rubbed his eyes. I did the same, and let myself fall onto the mildly uncomfortable rock.

“We need to find Cain too,” I added.

“Yes. I hope he’s alright. He should be able to outrun the dungeon core if nothing else.”

“Core?”

“Spirit.”

“What’s up with you?” I asked, propping myself up. I quickly realised that this position was even more uncomfortable than the laying down one, so I sat, legs crossed, and watched Etienne.

Something was off but I didn’t think that it was the dungeon pretending to be him again. Maybe he was just tired and scared like me. But I knew how he was when he was tired, and I’ve never seen him scared before… Even then, it seemed to be something else.

From the way his back was slouched, and how he faced mostly away from me, so as to still be able to see me in his peripheral vision, all while looking out towards the empty and dark cavern.

“Here.” I handed him my flashlight. “Let’s rest for a few minutes longer, and then go looking for a way deeper in. I hate the idea to my core, but we need to regroup with the child and kill the creature.”

I raised a hand to my lips in confusion. I didn’t sound like myself either. And that too could not have been exhaustion and fear. I had been feeling those two thing for a while now.

“I can ask you the same thing,” Etienne turned towards me with a smile. “Since when do you call you not-cousin ‘the child’.”

Let’s both pretend I didn’t slip up there, child. Rest. And I shall rest too.

“Since you’ve been acting weird. I needed to get your attention,” I playfully hit his shoulder, forced smile on my face.” I had never been more glad for my array of ‘blending in’ skills, and I really hoped Etienne didn’t notice the underlaying panic in my expression.

The handle of my katana had burned in that pleasantly familiar way, before turning stone-cold. And just as quickly, I had forgotten what brought on this sudden wave of anxiety and clarity. A veil had been lifted long enough for me to a system window – or had it been a voice in my head? And now it had fallen back down, and I was no longer too sure.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“How did you get those mana potions?” Etienne asked.

“Luck,” I smiled, surprised to hear that word out loud. “I used luck the way it was intended to, I think.”

Etienne frowned.

“I mean, I’ve read theories, but I never thought you would someone who hangs around those corners of the web. Or was that something you knew from your other world?”

“No,” I shook my head. “It’s was a hunch, based on something Cain had told me. Or a lucky guess if you will,” I smirked.

“Well, it would be good if you could do that again. How’s your luck looking now? Mine is down to 23. Well, mostly from when the creature pretended to be you earlier. And some psy damage in the room. I’m guessing yours is about – wait - ” his glance fell onto my bandaged arm, and I nodded to confirm his suspicions. I had not regained any luck.

“I have a regeneration skill,” I explained, “But it hasn’t activated. I think the dungeon is blocking it.”

“Well,” Etienne read something off a system Window I could not see, “I wouldn’t know, but that sounds like a stretch.” He eventually concluded. “I mean, come on, isn’t this whole dungeon weird to you? Paris has never been the nicest city. We have zombies, giant pigeons, mandrakes, gremlins, but, a monster this size, this sophisticated, and sentient – It just doesn't sound right.”

I scoffed. To me there was not much difference between the thing that had us currently trapped, and the monsters that had been attacking me these past months. But perhaps that was a nuance only someone who grew up in this environment could pick up on. Suddenly, a key piece of information from the ‘immoral immortality’ came back to me.

“Well, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s a natural side effect of the War.” I cautiously replied. Despite everything, Theodgar’s warning about subjects and the company they could and couldn’t be discussed in was still fresh in my mind. “This section was walled off. Maybe the workers upstairs were trying to contain this. And wild lands have been expanding all over the world. I think the longest we went without having a new Wild Land pop up over an oil rig or in some school, museum, or artefact factory was three days? Just under four, in Octobre.”

Etienne chuckled.

“You are the only one who’s counting.”

“No, but I’m right.” I shrugged in return. “The global balance has been ruptured or what have you, and now we’ve been swallowed by a living dungeon.”

“Do you think someone’s behind it?” Etienne asked, a soft sparkle in his eyes.

He’d given me that look before, where he didn’t believe what I was saying. So I changed the subject:

“You never answered my question, about what was wrong.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, and glanced to the side.

“You have been honest with me, so I guess it’s only fair if I come clean too.”

“You make it sound so dramatic.” I tried to joke, but my tone inadvertently remained serious. “I’m worried about you. I have been for quite some time. It’s – there are so many unsaids in our relationship…”

I wasn’t sure how to finish my sentence, but Etienne seemed to have gotten it anyway, as he nodded:

“And I pushed for answers, so now it’s my turn to come clean.”

“Well, if I’m being honest, I think that was the right thing to do. There’re less barriers between us now. No more of that Bordeaux Normandie discourse, or skill talk…”

“I was annoying you with that, wasn’t I?” He smirked.

“You never believed me before.” I twitched a corner of my mouth. “It’s nice when you do. Your expression is different,”

He looked to the side again, clearly feeling guilty.

“Whatever it is,” I reached out with my good arm, and took his hand in mine, “You can tell me. Well, unless you never want to see me again, then maybe, don’t? But anything else, really, it can’t beat the weirdness of my dimension travelling.”

He gave me a weak smile. For a few seconds his eyes moved side to side, as if he was reading something only he could see, and then a blue screen appeared before my eyes:

Etienne Berger

He/Him

24

B-

Assassin

Para-elementalist

B+ Poison Resistance [Pa]

B Poison Dart [Ac]

C Flashover [Ac]

C Surcharge [Ac]

C- Eyes of Shango [Ac]

luck

23/100

MP

2/100 (-1 per 10 minutes, ongoing effect Eyes of Shango)

Strength

11

Dexterity

16

Constitution

17

Intelligence

12

Wisdom

12

Charisma

16

[https://i.imgur.com/OHMyQo0.png]