I had many expectations for The Dungeon. For starters, it’s a B-Rank dungeon! My wanderlust for this world hadn’t really abated in anyway. I’d just gotten more… focused. It’s not paranoia if you literally have enemies coming after you at every angle. Worse is when I can feel it. Just walking down the street towards one of the big skyscraper like trees, I can feel it. Danger is an offshoot of power and all information is under my analyze. Just not within easy reach or easily understandable.

I pass by a group of adventurers and I can feel how powerful but not quite dangerous they are. It’s just a group of elves, no, even more than that. They seem to look at me how a lot of elves look at me… with awe and even a bit of excitement. I hear them talking to each other and one going about ‘The children are talking about him a lot. I heard…’ For god’s sake… it was one child I talked to for five seconds…

Never doubt the power of mother’s and children I guess.

The danger from them is there but passive. They are strong enough to put up a fight but still… not… really an issue for our current team.

And then a little while later, I pass by a lone human walking. C-grade, weaker end. And yet the danger from them is incredible. If I were alone, they’d definitely attack me. The glare and hatred in his eyes… are pretty strong but pale in comparison to Riary. She has turned anger into the same thing as her magic, an art form.

It doesn’t take too long but still, even if I’ve seen much much bigger, the trees are impressive here. It naturally reminds me of the jungle but the type of trees are closer to oak. Now that I’m not in any kind of real, well, active danger… it’s a lot more fun. I can just be impressed and excited by such big living objects. A completely impossible thing on earth, even putting redwoods to shame. Better yet, their roots go through the ground, connecting them through a lot of the city. It’s where a lot of smaller but similar look tree houses and buildings come from but not all, by no means. Usually just the important ones.

It’s simple process to get inside. There’s a large door, a guard, a line, another door, and then we’re in. Less than five minutes. In front of us is a massive hole in the ground, underneath a tree, with stairs leading into the dark.

“This is it?” Tyler asks.

Oi! Where’s your sense of adventure?! We’re about to go into the bowels of the earth to fight tons of monsters and probably more than a few adventurers. Actually, wait a minute…

“Didn’t you guys go into dungeons before?” I ask.

Konohora shakes her head. “No, not before going on our journey. The one in the Mauv Kingdom Capital is only C-Rank… and there was never really a need to go.”

I nodded, made sense. You were being trained by A and maybe S rankers, and at the very least royal guards, knights, and wizards of the B rank. There’s absolutely no reason to go into a C-rank dungeon with that type of background available.

“Let’s go already.” Riary said, ever impatient.

I took my first steps… down a lot of steps. Minutes began to pass and my idle mind turned to the stairs. They were wide enough that tripping and falling would be a bit ridiculous. As if they were specifically made for large groups of people. What started to impress upon me though… was just how deep we were going.

It just kept going down.

“Is this normal?” I must’ve asked after like ten minutes.

“For B-Grade Dungeons, yeah.” Riary said. “The Core will naturally expand and fall over time, in its effort to reach the leylines. Whenever it does, it massively alters the entire dungeon as it grades up. Being inside at that point would probably be a death sentence. All of this probably looked a lot different when it was just C-Grade.”

I looked over at Riary, a bit surprised. She had plenty of knowledge in her head, having gotten probably the best education of all of us, at least for this world. But she hardly ever actually answered me fully, unless she deemed it necessary. Just a bit of a… micro aggression I guess. Now I looked over at her and her eyes weren’t even on me. On any of us. I could feel the fire mana in the air twirling slightly and her eyes seemed to be a bit ablaze.

Riary was well and truly excited to burn some unfortunate monsters to the ground.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

After half an hour of walking into the darkness, lit by only sparse torches, we finally reached the first level. I focused on the range from my Power Gauge. The Dungeon itself was like a single living creature, kind of. It would be like if a human was wearing armor. If you were inside a giant, that armor would have a presence, sure, but it wasn’t the giant. It was… almost disturbing in a way. I truly felt like I was inside a living creature, according to my Gauge.

But that certainly helped funnel my Ability.

I could already sense a bunch of teams not far away, fighting with things. A lot of things. One of which was coming our way.

“Stop it!” A scream came from far off, before I saw what looked like an upright lizard rushing at us. It looked like a dinosaur. One of the ones that flair their necks out and spit acid. I was taken in by the awe of it, as it ran at us with a single minded fury. It would most likely forever be engraved into my mind.

Because the next second it was burnt away to ash. Literally, one moment it was there, the next it was gone. Bones, blood, meat, all gone. All reduced to nothing. It happened so quickly my mind was left reeling a little bit. I could even see Tyler blinking, as if the creature in front of us was nothing more than an illusion.

Riary had a wide smile on her face, one that looked… thirsty. I suppose… it had been nearly two months since we’d fought anything beyond our trainers and bandits… and even longer since Riary got to fully let loose on some actual mindless monsters. Well, without being nerfed by teleportation and by the environment.

Soon, a C-Rank party of elves rounded the corner, having chased after the lizard.

“Huh? Where did it go?!”

“Killed it.” Riary said.

“Killed it?! But, but where is it? I don’t see…”

Riary was done, already marching forward. Tyler gave them an apologetic smile and hurried after her. The monsters on this level and the next few down would only be C-Rank. I couldn’t be… quite as thorough as Riary but nothing for the next few levels would be a threat. That gave me plenty of time to observe the dungeon and the people around instead of the monsters.

So far, on this level, all the monsters seemed to be those cool looking lizards. Very few came towards us and they were burned down with ease. Most adventurers seemed to not be having any issues with them either. They mostly seemed to be killing them to harvest them for their meat, organs, and other resources. This was more of a farming level than anything.

But the dungeon was big. Even knowing the layout and walking directly towards the stairs, it still took a few hours. Thankfully, we’d gotten more than use to long treks after a month of caravan travel. Me and Tyler talked about some of the other things he’d done while I was getting my ass kicked for a month. Apparently there was this great fish place Riary seemed to love and Konohora had found a few new robes, none of which she cared to actually wear.

She did however have a lot to say about her own trainer and how great she was. Naturally, not all of it was good, Konohora was a truth priestess after all. But it was exactly what you’d expect someone who couldn’t lie but liked someone to say if they were great. Riary though, she was practically running. Not really, it was more just a quick walk but at our levels… even a quick walk was nearly an outright sprint of a normal human.

That still creeped on me and probably always would. The differences. All of the differences between human and Demon, between normal human and a strong human and demon. My body, my mind, my strength, speed… it was more than just unnatural. It was moving at rapid pace to beyond just a ‘regular’ superhuman. Hell, at B-Rank… I’d probably only be an ‘Elite’ Demon. To be a SuperDemon, I’d probably have to crack through A-rank. What an absolutely monstrously powerful race.

Still, whatever. I tried to distract myself from that disconnected feeling. I’d never felt right in my fucking skin. Changing that skin had made it far worse but it was still just that, worse. Not different. Not new. I had enough baggage on my plate that dealing with a race change wasn’t on the table. We can conquer one thing at time and I’d deal with it all with that body changing magic.

One step at a time. Fight our way through the dungeon, become B-Rank, fight our way out of the dungeon, and then continue the search. New strength probably means new information, somehow.

Simple.

I frowned, the second I thought that. We’d been traveling for a few hours now and we were on maybe the fourth or fifth level. This one was in that sweet spot between ‘A bit too far for farming but a bit too weak to be challenging for C-Ranks.’ There weren’t many teams on this level, and it was more than large enough that I couldn’t see end to end with my power gauge.

But what I could see…

I quickly pushed Tyler, but he already had his shield up, ready to block. I had just waved him the effort. A wind slash came, passing by where he’d raised his shield, smashing into the dungeon walls.

Eight adventurers walked out from behind a corner. We were already under attack huh?

I quickly read their power levels… and smirked.

These were the guys that hurt Tyler right?

Well, time for some payback then.