Sofia took a deep breath.

“It’s so nice to be able to speak again.”

“Right?”

“And yeah, the music is nice. So much better than the moon’s constant silence.”

“Good to hear. And just wait until you hear the boss music!”

“Would said boss be you?” Sofia asked in return.

“Kind of? It’s more like I’m the dungeon itself, oh, and I’m not allowed to save you even if it looks like you’re gonna kick the bucket. In fact, I will be doing my best to kill you, be aware of that.”

Everelle said that without showing any particular emotions, which Sofia felt a bit unsettling.

“Out of curiosity, how long have you been doing that whole dungeon gig?”

“Huh, not a question I usually get. People normally ask about what’s to be expected in the dungeon, not about what I eat for dinner, you know?”

“I’ll manage the dungeon somehow, but I won’t find any answers there. I might be a bit too curious for my own good but I really want to learn more about the Sunless and the trial’s inner workings,” Sofia admitted.

“Eh, many things I can’t tell, as you can guess, but I can share some. Just a question of my own first, how did the quest go? I see the parasite’s gone?”

Sofia reflexively touched her neck. “It’s, huh. I did not complete the quest, actually, the parasite just disappeared while I was fighting the Destroyer.”

There was a moment of silence.

“D- Destroyer?”

“I’d show you the spoils but I can’t access my ring. Oh, right, look at my mana heart. Neat, right?” Sofia bragged while taking out her mana heart from under her arm to show it off. As she did so, she was carefully monitoring the mana around her, not trusting that she might not get ambushed while her mana heart was exposed.

“Boy I might actually be in trouble this time. No wonder the difficulty rating came out so high. You’re the first to actually trigger hell mode in the four hundred years I’ve been workin’ here, ahah,” Everelle explained with an awkward laugh.

Just four hundred? Supposedly the trial’s been up for three thousand years.

“How bad is it?”

“Huh… I’d say you’re cooked meat, but if you took down a Kidjikkik Destroyer you might actually make it through? Reward’s worth the trouble though.”

“I think I get it but care to explain what the reward exactly is?”

“You get the boss’ imprint and any one series of heart catalysts that you want. Say you choose the slashing resistance series, you’ll get a small, medium, large, and giant slashing catalyser.”

“Giant is for the rank above S?”

“Yeah. As long as you wager any decent divine essence you can go up to SSS, need a giant catalyser and a keystone imprint though, but I see that part might not be too much of an issue for you.”

Can she just tell me? I won’t complain about the lack of censoring but it feels unusual. So I really need another keystone for Pareth… SSS is the regular maximum, then… Since the percent stat upgrade is a linear +25 per rank… That’s 170%?

“What about the ranks after that?”

“After that?”

Sofia raised an eyebrow at the question. “I showed you the heart and you didn’t identify it?”

“I’m not allowed to Identify your stuff, girl, would give the Dungeon an unfair advantage. And trust me it doesn’t need that.”

So she doesn’t know I can’t heal. I might be able to use that knowledge later…

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Sofia explained what the bonus of her wager was, and that left Everelle speechless for a while, and she told Sofia to wait while she looked things up on her end. About five minutes later Everelle’s voice came back, a bit shaky.

“Alright, so. Uh, I looked it up. I can actually share two things. First is, the extra ranks are an experimental thing the scribes have been working on for a while, so you’ll be the first to have a heart going above SSS rank if you get there, which is pretty darn cool. Second thing is: you’re fucked. I don’t know what management is smoking, but the shit they want you to do is… Good luck.”

“Very encouraging, thanks,” Sofia sarcastically replied.

“I’m just telling it like it is.”

“I appreciate the honesty.”

Everelle sighed. “Say that again when you’re done with the dungeon, alright? Actually I’ll be making enemies if I kill you here, so try to make it through, please. Oh right, since you’ve been pretty nice, any type of imprint you’d like to get in particular?”

Making enemies? If I die here then it’s only my fault for entering, though?

“You can control the imprints? If I could get only mana and skill shards that would be nice.”

“Aight! Coming right up. By the way, I can only communicate with you in rest areas like this lobby, so don’t waste your time talking to me outside of it, won’t hear ya.”

“Got it.”

“Then we’re almost done. We’ve just got one more thing. Only gonna take a second.”

After Everelle said that, Pareth started shrinking until he was just about the same size as Sofia.

“Really?”

“Yeah, the penalty for you are the movement restrictions, though they apply to your entire team, but both Pareth and the small one got their own. Your big skeleton can only use one hand and is sized down, while the small one, huh, is limited to one page at a time?” Everelle said, sounding uncertain.

“I see… Is that all?”

“That made sense? I’m just reading the prompts I got so… Uh, there’s one more restriction from the small one but I guess you’ll discover that very fast as it’s another team-wide effect.”

“We’re good to go, then?”

“All good! You can start anytime. Good luck surviving me, Sofia.”

Sofia smiled under her helmet and walked with her skeletons to the door to the next room.

“Do your worst, Everelle.”

Immediately after opening the door, the ambiance changed. The relaxing music stopped, the temperature fell, and the mana in the air dried up in a second.

“No ambient mana outside of the rest areas? And I thought this place was nicer than the outside. At least there’s still air so there’s that.”

The long straight corridor in front of Sofia reminded her of the second trial’s mazes; it was not exactly something she was glad to see again. There was a thick black fog about ten meters down the corridor, preventing her from seeing any further. Her senses made it clear that the fog was made entirely of mana.

If not for the downsizing ‘penalty’, Pareth wouldn’t even be able to stand straight in there.

Before going, she dismissed the war horse skeleton.

“If we’re limited to one page at a time, we should use it better, I would call the birds but since flying is prohibited… Rats? We need scouts to map out the place.”

Bookie nodded and he opened the book and tore the one hundred rats page by himself, draining a bit of Sofia’s mana to summon the critters.

Sofia started by sending one rat into the mana fog. She instantly lost contact with it.

Dead?

Wanting to check from a bit closer, Sofia told Pareth to advance and followed him. She quickly realized that the fog was moving with them. After a few steps, Bookie even grabbed Sofia’s attention to point out what was happening behind. The fog was also in the rest area.

“So it’s less that it’s moving with us, and more that it stops about fifteen meters from us?“

Just to check if it was a consistent behavior, Sofia sent a rat to the fog in the rest area. It died as soon as its bones disappeared within the black fog.

“Seems dangerous. What if we try spreading out? Bookie, walk back, and Pareth,head forward.”

As it was, if the black fog was the limit of where they could stay, as long as it stayed away from all three of them, they could potentially go from thirty to ninety meters of usable area by spreading out. Except it did not, in fact, Pareth almost walked straight into the fog as Bookie was a bit too eager to follow orders and rushed back to the rest area. The fog was actually following him.

So this is Bookie’s second restriction. Everelle was right, we discovered it really fast. It’s hard to miss. Stay where you hard Bookie, let’s try a few things.

Sofia walked up to Pareth, bringing the bone slates with her, and she extracted some bone from one of them, making herself a long bone cane, which she swung at the fog. The fog was not disturbed in the slightest, but the cane came out of it perfectly fine.

Looking at it from this close, Sofia understood the nature of the fog. It was not just mana, but long strands of cursed mana.

Depending on the nature of the curse I might actually be fine if I step in there. Especially if it’s some kind of [Instant death] curse. But I don’t think I want to try, not without the unlife runes. Things being like that, the rats might not be the best summons. But let’s keep them around for now. Come back, Bookie, let’s get going.

It only took a few seconds of walking down the straight path for the first group of Sunless drones to crawl out of the fog, already prepared to attack.

----------------------------------------