The secret exit wasn’t all that hidden, it was just a hole in the ground in a room guarded by four Veik royal guards. And it was just that, a hole, not a relatively clean and straight tunnel like everywhere else in the hive, a simple hole that looked like it had always been there.

Everelle stood on the border of the hole.

There you go. Have a nice trip hun.

Sofia remodeled her bone tablet. ‘That’s it?’

Not what you expected? Come to my dungeon, then, it’s a lot more fun.

‘Can I know where it is?’

Of course not. You should find it by yourself. Go now, before the king changes his mind.

Said Veik King had been following Sofia and Everelle from a distance, accompanied by a whole retinue of guards.

Alright.

‘See you again soon.’

Everelle’s necklace eye narrowed, and without warning, she shoved Sofia down the hole.

As Sofia fell, the Sunless’ voice whispered in her mind.

I will be waiting.

Sofia was only half surprised about getting pushed in, if she had to be honest, she had let it happen, either Everelle was surprisingly weak for her level, or she had been holding back a great deal.

Just as she let herself fall, Sofia changed her title back to the Cheater, and fired a bunch of identifying magic toward everyone. With so many requests for Mr. Scribe all at once, it would be a few seconds before anything showed up.

What a mysterious person. It only makes me more curious about the Sunless.

Where do they come from? Why do they work for the system?

The Identify results started coming in, starting from the royal guards, they were all between level 250 and 299.

[Veik Royal Guard - Lv. 264 - Imprint power : 200 - Effect : ‘Veik Fortress’ Skill shard (1/3)] ‘The royal guards charged with the protection of the Veik royal family. Their attack power is lacking but their defensive capabilities are second to none.’

Not as strong as I feared, the imposing size is deceptive but the harvesters I bolted at the hive entrance were of a similar level. Pareth could probably hold one off while I charge a bolt if needed. It would have been nice to get the skill shards for Pareth but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

Hopefully the worms will have good imprints considering how many I have to kill.

Meanwhile, as Sofia dropped down the endless hole, she periodically used her dragon scale claws to scratch at the wall and slow her descent to a reasonable speed.

How deep is this? I’ll soon get to the center of the moon at this rate.

[Hivelord - Lv. 386 - Imprint power : Keystone - Effect : Unknown]

Oh, that must be the King. Keystone? That’s new. Weren’t keystones a thing to build stone gates? I need to re-read my books on architecture.

While she fell, Sofia did just that, she grabbed a book from her storage and started reading at her top speed. It only took her a few seconds to find the page about arches and the importance of the keystone.

Crucial structural element holding everything in place, allowing the arch to bear weight. Interesting. So I can expect that this Keystone imprint is meant to be used as a finishing touch on the heart to stabilize everything else? Maybe as a last step when you have no more space for regular imprints?

Getting this one is just impossible, though. Also, actual class name and no additional description, further confirming the Veik King is ‘a person’ with access to the system, and not just some brainless monster, though that was already obvious.

Maybe the Sunless Nightbringer has one too? That thing was positively gigantic.

Finally, the Identify result from Everelle came back.

[Dungeon Core (Sunless) - Lv.299 - Imprint power : 10 000 - Effect : + 1 000 000 Mana]

Dungeon core? That’s her class? As in she’s the core part of a Dungeon? Is that a bit like Saria’s class then?

[You have conquered the dungeon : Fenrir’s trial of Ragnarok - Congratulations!]

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A small wooden box like the gachapon boxes appeared in the air near Sofia, which she quickly grabbed before it could collide with the sharp walls of the infinite hole she was falling down.

Feels like it’s empty…

Sofia opened the box and a quartet of System notifications appeared.

[Choice box! Pick one of three random Large Heart Catalysers!]

[Large Slashing Heart Catalyser]

[Large Exploding Heart Catalyser]

[Large Cursing Heart Catalyser]

Seeing the choice appear, Sofia felt the need to pause her fall completely and think. Digging her claws into the stone, she soon came to a stop and started considering her options.

Considering the small slashing catalyser she had gotten from Tarren’s dungeon gave 5% slashing damage resistance, it was fair to assume these all gave at least 10% of their respective bonuses.

Now, the three options were good. Slashing was especially good for Pareth, whose bones had a bad tendency of getting cut through by stronger opponents, and combined with the small catalyser of the same type, it would start to add up to a lot of resistance.

Exploding would give Sofia more leeway to just throw explosive bolts without a care even in closed environments. She already had 50% explosion resistance from VPPV, so any additional protection could bring her closer to a complete immunity, which was good to pursue.

Lastly, Cursing was valuable simply because Sofia had no protection against curses at all. Currently, her anti-curse tools were the Angel’s bolt acting as an anti-curse-torche, but that only worked for weak ambient-air curses, and the Ring of Zar which was essentially good against any kind of magic, but just once. Besides that, she had nothing against cursed mana. She understood a bit more about curses now from the classes in the academy and from hanging out with Zerei a lot during the academy year, but just knowing about them was not a proper protection.

The best protection against curses is still just barrier magic… I just haven’t had time to really work on that.

Finally, Sofia came to a swift decision, and a large glowing rock appeared inside of the previously empty wooden box.

[Large Exploding Heart Catalyser]: A heart catalyser crafted by a master mage. Allows one to upgrade their Mana Heart from rank A to S once sufficient imprint power has been collected. Gives the Mana Heart the added attribute : +15% Explosion damage resistance.

As expected, A to S rank. A whole fifteen percent, not bad. Slashing would have been nice for Pareth but ideally I would rather get him a bludgeoning one, if that’s a thing. It must be a thing.

Sofia stored the catalyser and let herself fall again. She could not see the end of this hole. She tried to keep her speed relatively slow, and every so often she would stop completely and complain about how this hole never ended. This lasted for so long that she was starting to wonder if the hole was not some kind of elaborate illusion and she had actually not moved at all. That was until something strange started happening. Despite the hole being mostly a straight-ish line down, Sofia could no longer fall straight down. Like the hole was slowly becoming a very steep slant.

That was extremely annoying. She could no longer just fall, or she would just hit the walls every few seconds, and ‘sliding’ against the uneven rock walls felt about as good as trying to slide on stairs.

The slant became less and less steep, until Sofia could just walk upright within the ‘hole’. It had all happened very gradually and Sofia was completely lost as to where she actually was by now. Over the hours, she had tried several times to feel for other caverns or anything around the unending hole with the graveyard skeletons, but she never found anything. She was just lost deep underground, with only one way back and one way forward.

I have been at this for like six hours now…

The flat path Sofia ran through eventually became a slope.

Seriously… It’s going up now… I’m going to lose my mind at this rate…

Sofia gave up with the hole. She crafted herself a bone coffin of sorts, attached a bunch of bone chains to it and changed the last ring of every chain to become a hook. She summoned her troop of a hundred skeleton rats through Bookie, and secured them all to the hooks with bone dominus. The entire process took about five minutes, after which she simply wrapped herself in a blanket and laid down inside of the bone coffin before closing it back on herself, and making it a blessed construct instead of Pareth.

Now go, wake me up when we’re back to the outside world…

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When Sofia woke up, the coffin was no longer moving. And she couldn’t feel the rats’ presence.

Did they run out of time before getting me out of the hole?

She spread her mana senses around, and what she felt left her perplexed. The environment was not whatever she had expected, in fact she was not near the exit of some hole, she was in what could only be called an actual room, with flat walls and doors.

Where in the fuck did the rats bring me?

Pareth couldn't have seen anything if he was inside with me while I slept… Bookie, you have an explanation?

Bookie appeared in the coffin near Sofia’s head in his original book form, emitting his usual fog and a faint light. He opened by himself, presenting Sofia with a single page, the Sandworm skeleton.

Sandworm… Worms?

So I didn’t find the worms, the worms found me? Is that what you’re hinting at? Why would they bring me to such a human-shaped place?

And most importantly… Why did you not wake me up?

The book shivered and disappeared back to where it came from.

Are you alright? Hey!

The book reappeared within the coffin, trembling, when Sofia reached for him it instinctually floated back, knocking against the coffin’s walls.

Bookie? What is it? Are you scared of me?

Could it be… Because I told him to wake me up when we reach the outside?

I see… I’m not mad, I won’t scold you. It was my fault for giving you a dumb order.

These simple words seemed to placate the fearful book.

Seriously… You can do like Pareth and act upon your own judgment next time. I really don’t mind. In fact, I would prefer that.

Now, let’s see what this place has to offer.

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