Busal’s jaw clenched and his muscles bulged. Arwin didn’t let his grip budge. He stared down into the warrior’s eyes, meeting all the challenge in them and giving back nothing but an icy gaze.

“You would be correct,” Selen said. “According to the terms both of you agreed on, I would profess you the victor.”

Arwin released Busal’s hand and let it drop. “Then I presume I have proven my abilities to a sufficient degree?”

“I would say that you have. You vouch for the abilities of the rest of your guild?”

“Yes,” Arwin said with a nod. “They are all more than capable.”

“Then you may enter. I do not think I have any logical reason to deny you any further access.”

“I—” Busal started, rising from the ground as anger flashed across his features, but Selen cut him off before he could so much as muster a word.

“You will not attempt to undermine my decision,” Selen snapped. “As we have agreed upon, you own the land. They will pay the entry fee, but it is I — the Secret Eye — that determines who may enter. Your jurisdiction begins and ends outside the entrance of the dungeon.”

“Fine,” Busal spat, rising to his feet and spinning away. “Do as you will.”

Selen shook her head as the man left, then held out a pouch, pulling its mouth open. “It will be ten gold for each of your entry fees.”

Arwin counted the requested coins out and deposited them into the bag. They fell into its depths without so much as a clink. She closed the pouch and returned it to her waist, then gave him a small nod.

“What was your name and guild again, Smith?”

“Ifrit, of the Menagerie guild. We aren’t fully established yet, but we’re in processing,” Arwin said.

“In processing.” A small smile played across Selen’s lips and she nodded to the dark cave entrance. “Very well. Continue, and do so hastily before the crowd gets too irate with us. Ensure you do not die.”

Arwin nodded and stepped past her. The rest of his guild followed after him as they headed over to the entrance of the dark cave.

“Godspit,” Reya breathed, hurrying to fall in step with Arwin. “That was incredible!”

“Save it for when we’re inside the dungeon,” Arwin muttered back. “We don’t need any more attention than we’ve already gotten.”

They stepped into the cave. It continued on for just under a minute before coming to a stop before a roiling wall of yellow energy. Power rose off the portal and prickled against Arwin’s skin.

“It’s one of these, huh?” Rodrick asked, sending a glance over her shoulder. “Something seems a little odd about this entire dungeon.”

“I’ve noticed the same,” Arwin said. “But the only way is forward. I’m not giving up the stuff that Jessen left behind unless we have a really good reason to turn back. You haven’t picked up on anything, have you?”

Rodrick shook his head. “On strange things? Yes. But on something that would make me think we should turn back? Not yet.”

“Then we keep going,” Lillia said.

The six of them linked hands.

Then, as one, they stepped into the portal.

The world snapped like the shutter of a camera lens had gone off. An explosion of color swirled through the air as Arwin’s foot fell on grassy dirt. He blinked, shaking off the effects of the portal.

All traces of the cave had vanished. Towering trees rose all around them, their branches thick and coated with large leaves but sparse enough to leave room for sunlight to filter through them. It fell on Arwin’s unprotected arms, warming them. Distant birdsong just barely reached his ears, joined by the loud rustling roar of wind through leaves.

“Whoa,” Reya breathed, her eyes going wide as she stepped away from the group to place a hand on the trunk of a tree. “What happened? Did we get tricked and sent somewhere else?”

“No,” Rodrick said, his face going grim. “This is a dungeon. Look behind us.”

A rectangle of rippling yellow energy floated just half a foot off the ground, waiting for them to pass back through it.

“Why’s it look like this?” Reya asked. She turned in a circle and squinted up at the sky. “We’re outside!”

“We aren’t,” Rodrick said with a shake of his head. “And now I know why they were so damn worried about people dying in here. The dungeon is overloaded. If much more magical energy ends up here, there’s going to be a Dungeon Break.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Dungeon Break?” Reya asked with a frown. “What’s that?”

“When something dies outside, their magical energy disperses. Some of it gets given to you by the Mesh as a reward for the fight if your class allows it, and the rest… well, nobody knows where it goes,” Arwin said. “But it goes somewhere.”

“Right,” Reya said.

“Well, that doesn’t happen in a dungeon. Dungeons trap magic within them. That’s the whole reason monsters gather in them,” Arwin said. “So when a huge number of people die in a dungeon, all that excess magical energy starts to build up.”

“Monster deaths contribute a tad as well, but not as much,” Lillia added. “Monsters are literally made from magic, so their bodies physically hold the magic inside them. Adventurers, on the other hand… not so much. So when they die, a lot of that energy just seeps into the environment.”

“So all this is just magical energy?” Reya asked. She touched the leaf of a tree. “It seems real.”

“It’s real,” Rodrick said. “I mean, the light is fake. That’s just a fake orb of fire or something like that, but I digress. The extra magic makes the dungeon grow, but it’s a very gradual process in most cases. That is unless there’s enough latent magical energy in a dungeon to completely fill it to the brim. Then it expands all at once. Explosively.”

“I’ve heard of this before,” Olive said, her face going pale. “The dungeon basically swallows up everything in the area around it and pulls it in.”

“Milten is right next to us,” Reya said, realization washing over her face. She backed away from the tree and put her hand on the hilt of her dagger. “What happens if people get sucked in?”

“I don’t know about people, but I’ve seen it happen to some monsters,” Lillia said. “They get warped. There’s no other word for it. Magic infuses their bodies and rips their psyche apart. They turn into horrifying shadows of their former selves. The only thing you can do with a Dungeon Break is purge the entire dungeon. The warped monsters can’t reproduce or spread, so once you kill them off, it’s just a larger, higher ranked dungeon.”

Anna’s hands tightened around her staff and her lips pressed thin. “Why is the Secret Eye allowing anyone into the dungeon at this stage? It should be quarantined off until the magic dissipates. If it’s expanded this much, then just a few strong dead adventurers might be enough to tip the scales.”

A chilling thought struck Arwin. The Secret Eye weren’t exactly concerned with the lives of people in a random town far away from the center of the Kingdom of Lian. Their purpose was getting information and power.

They’re limiting the amount of people allowed in and have a member standing right next to the dungeon, so there’s no way they actually want a Dungeon Break to happen… but if one ends up going off after they leave, they won’t care.

“I get the feeling they really want whatever Jessen’s key unlocks,” Arwin said. “They probably threw people against it for long enough to gather all this power, then realized they’re going to lose the artifact if they keep feeding the dungeon and started doing preventative measures — but they still want the artifact.”

“Greedy idiots,” Rodrick said. “Clearing out the dungeon would reduce some of the magical energy in it, but it sounds like nobody’s managed to get very deep yet.”

“I can see why,” Arwin said as he cast a look around the forest. “And it leaves us with two options. We press forward and try to get the artifacts, or we leave and let them do as they will to avoid getting caught up in a Dungeon Break.”

“I’m not so sure we can leave. Not me, at least,” Lillia said. She swallowed heavily. “I’m stuck in Milten for the foreseeable future.”

Oh, shit. She can’t leave her tavern behind because of her class. I don’t know what the Mesh would do if it got transformed into part of a dungeon… but something tells me it won’t let her off the hook.

“Then we’ve only got one option,” Arwin said. His jaw set. “We clear the dungeon ourselves. That’ll reduce a lot of the magical energy here and, when the Secret Eye finds out that the door is open and there isn’t anything left to take, they’ll leave and the flow of adventurers will be far lower.”

“That’s assuming we manage to find it before a Dungeon Break goes off in the first place, right?” Olive asked. “I don’t know where the other adventurer teams are showing up, but every second that passes is time that one of them can get killed. Why exactly can’t we just leave Milten? I understand your street means a lot to you, but don’t your lives matter more?”

Arwin and Lillia exchanged a glance.

“It’s me,” Lillia said. “I don’t know if this is the right place to go into the details of my past and class but suffice to say that I am physically bound to my tavern. If I have to leave it behind, I’ll die.”

Olive’s eyes widened. “What kind of class binds you to a building?”

“I’d be happy to tell you when we get out of here, but I don’t think it would be beneficial to go into any revelations right now,” Lillia said. She hesitated for a second, then sighed. “But if you think it’s going to negatively affect you until you find out, I can tell you.”

Olive studied Lillia for a few moments. She looked to the others. “They already know?”

Lillia nodded. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll wait. I trust their judgement enough at this point,” Olive allowed. She pulled her sword free of its sheath and held it before her. “Let’s get this over with, then. If we can’t leave, then we need to be fast. I just have no idea how we’re going to find anything in a bloody forest.”

Arwin banished his helmet as a small grin pulled across his lips. “I think I might be able to help a bit there. Olive is right. We’re going to have to move fast, so let me guide the way.”

And with that, he drew on his magical energy and activated [Dragon’s Greed]. Energy hummed in the air around him as he felt invisible lines of force attach to his body. There were dozens of them at the minimum.

They pulled with different intensities, each leading in a different direction. A bead of sweat rolled down Arwin’s forehead as he tried to sift through them. There was so much magic in the dungeon. It really was just a small push away from a Dungeon Break.

[Dragon’s Greed] definitely wasn’t meant to work inside an area that was completely laden with magic. It was almost impossible to tell the direction of any one line of force. But, as he worked through them, one felt ever so slightly stronger than the others.

Arwin opened his eyes, turning to the left and pointing through the trees in its direction. He released his magic to save energy. “I can’t be certain, but I think the strongest magical aura is over there.”

“New skill?” Rodrick asked, tilting his head to the side.

Arwin nodded. “Yeah. It would have been a lot better in a normal dungeon, but we make do. That’s our best lead.”

“Then let’s get to it,” Rodrick said. He drew his own sword and walked to stand beside Arwin. “You and I at the front, Olive takes up the back to make sure we don’t get ambushed? Reya, Lillia, and Anna can stay between us.”

Everyone moved into formation and they set off.

None of them knew how long they had before a Dungeon Break occurred, but there was only one option that remained. They had to clear the dungeon before anyone else got themselves killed.