Alistair, Juno, and Zola followed Kanda into the abandoned fortress, while Alistair caught Ghost up on what he had intuited.

Ghost: She wants to use the dungeon core card against the assassins. What does that even mean? We need to talk to Zola about it. You do. Privately. But definitely not this weekend. I will persuade her otherwise.

Kanda summoned Fiera, her blazekitsune, whose fiery tail illuminated the following chamber revealing walls covered in grotesque carvings, the ceiling easily forty feet up.

“Impossible,” Zola whispered, her wand at the ready.

“Holy hell. If I had known this was in here, I would have suggested we be a bit more careful on the entry,” Juno said, the boy laughing nervously. “Imagine if this place caved in. Wait. Can a building cave in, or is it just a cave that can cave in?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Kanda said. “Be ready to fire at will.”

“Be ready to fire at will,” Juno said in his best impression of Ghost.

Kanda paused. “What’s that voice?”

“It’s the one Alistair does.”

She relaxed to some degree. “Ah, that one. Hopefully he’ll grow out of that.”

“Lorcan said that certain storytellers—”

“Quiet,” Zola told Juno. “We need to focus.”

Tarnis’ voice echoed across the chamber.

[Yes, yes, yes! You did it. You are actually brave—or if we’re being honest, stupid—enough to enter a previously undiscovered dungeon in search of a dungeon core and a dagger made out of a human femur. Ha! I really can’t believe it. And your bargain with me? You can’t go back on that now. I could have used my powers to spawn a door that would give you an immediate exit. But no. No. You wanted to risk it all for an unstable dungeon card. How exciting! How incredibly moronic. I can’t wait to see how this goes.]

Still holding his wand, Juno used his other hand to flip off the ceiling. “Kiss our asses, Tarnis.”

[I have never kissed an ass in my entire life!]

“I’ll bet you wish you did,” Juno said.

Ziggy, who remained on Alistair’s shoulder, squished angrily at Tarnis. Squish! Squish!

“Easy,” Alistair told the slime. “Don’t let Tarnis get under your…”

Ghost: Ziggy doesn’t have skin.

“Whatever.”

Alistair’s Gem Gaze power kicked in once they left the chamber with its high ceilings. The corridor had a vein of mana running through it, similar to the first Tarnis dungeon he had visited.

“I’m seeing something,” he called ahead to Kanda.

“I can see it too. If there’s an active dungeon core, you’ll see its powers with certain skills,” she said. “It’s basically the veins of the Mechanical summon. If you went deep enough into the Underhall, you’d see the same thing.”

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“The less I go in the Underhall, the better,” Juno said.

“Should we follow the vein of mana?” Alistair asked Kanda.

“We are following it. Daisy has already indicated that we will soon reach a stairwell that goes down. Did you summon Lionel?”

Juno and Zola turned to Alistair. “Who is Lionel?” Zola asked.

“About that. Um—”

“Alistair and I got into some things in Solaria,” Kanda explained. “This included a raid at the Undergast’s home that we had to, um, do to get in my uncle’s good graces. He let us keep the cards we found. One of those cards was Lionel, whom you may remember as Professor Lysander’s abyssal summon.”

“The one that fought the mana ray?” Juno asked. “Holy crapnuts, Alistair, that thing is crazy!”

Zola seemed confused until she answered her own question. “Lionel was Level 49 or something? How could you summon it unless… you’re summoning it at your current level and the card isn’t considered part of the three that you are allowed as a Fledgling. It’s a Forbidden Imprint Card. Duh.”

“Yeah, Zolski, duh. Wait, does that mean we could get a shitton of Forbidden summons?” Juno asked. “Melissa never explained that part to me.”

“She doesn’t tell you everything,” Kanda said as she moved ahead. “Alistair, summon Lionel, now. We’re heading into the dungeon. Lionel can go ahead with Daisy and deal lesser monsters allowing us to collect their cards as we search for the core.”

“You can do that?” Juno asked.

“There are no rules in a dungeon.”

Kanda’s statement didn’t sit well with Tarnis.

[What? No rules? Of course, there are rules in a dungeon. It’s a Mechanical summon. Respect it! You can’t just send your darkest summons ahead to clear out the dungeon for you. Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the adventure? That would be like a writer using some magical card to write their book for them instead of writing the book themselves! I know that is rather specific, but I also knew a writer who wanted to design something like that. What a crooked cock! Artists should respect their craft enough to know better. How can I be a dungeon architect, a famous one, I might add, that condones you using Forbidden Cards to your advantage to clear out a dungeon? It’s cheating!]

Kanda glared ahead. “Tarnis. Shut the fuck up. We’ll do this our way, and you’ll get your core. There were never stipulations on how this should be done.”

[But I don’t like what you’re doing!]

Juno pointed his wand at the ceiling. “Tarnis, I’m going to shoot you.”

[Try it, you little twat!]

“Juno, no,” Zola said as she pulled his arm down. “Tarnis isn’t there. Or he isn’t there in a way that you can shoot him. I say we ignore him and go with Kanda’s plan. We’ll get some fights in later.”

“We will,” Kanda told her. “We only want Daisy and Lionel to deal with low level creatures so we can save our power. We do this right, and the three of you won’t have to use an obelisk stone, which is something to brag about.”

Ghost: Agreed. Don’t listen to Tarnis. Let’s cheese our way to the top.

Alistair: Cheese our way to the top? What’s that even mean?

Ghost: An assassin phrase that you wouldn’t understand. Summon Lionel and Noctarii.

Alistair touched his chest and summoned Noctarii first.

Squish! Ziggy said in lieu of hello.

“Yeah, yeah, I see you. You sure are a needy slime. Well, it looks like I’m back,” Noctarii said, who currently wore his mask, his purple face glowing beneath.

“That’s not Lionel,” Kanda said as her flame kitsune returned to her.

“I want Noctarii to go ahead too. He can relay information faster,” Alistair told her.

“Go ahead?” Noctarii turned and dramatically started stretching. “I guess you all did it. You all entered the fortress, which is quickly becoming a dungeon. Great. You know who we could send ahead? The slime—”

Alistair summoned Lionel, the shadowy Abyssal instantly making his presence known through a tendril-ed darkness that cut back some of blazekitsune’s light.

“How may I be of service?” Lionel asked.

Juno laughed. “Holy shit, he’s even scarier than I thought!”

“We are in a unique location,” Lionel said as his dark head took a look around.

“Gee, you think?” Noctarii asked him. “Anyway, you and I are supposed to go ahead, and I’m in charge.”

“Are you?”

“Play nice,” Kanda told the fae. “The two of you will join Daisy in the chambers below. Noctarii, you’ll go back and forth, bringing information to us.”

Tarnis continued to whine as they moved on.

[No, no, no! This is not how a dungeon should be tackled!]