“Abigail,” I began tentatively. “I don’t think you can come with me for the next part.”

“Why?” she asked, looking wounded. “Are you going to kick me out now that you don’t need my help anymore?”

“No!” I backpedaled. “It’s just…the next passage is down there, under the lava.”

“Oh,” she said, rubbing her hands together excitedly. “I might have a thing for that.”

“A thing?” I asked.

“Well, it’s not as fancy as that space suit of yours, but it might work,” she explained. “And if it doesn’t, you won’t have to worry about kicking me out because I’ll be dead.”

I was more committed than ever to make up for my blunder. “No, don’t worry about it. Just set your respawn point here. We will find a way even if I have to dig you a tunnel to the next room.”

“Can you do that?” she asked, her eyes widening in shock.

“Sure, I can dig any…” I began

She cut me off. “Not that. Don’t you need a gate guard or town official to set your respawn point?”

“Um, no!” I laughed nervously, realizing I let something slip. “You just have to ask the system to do it for you.”

“I see,” she chuckled. “I suppose she would be interested in you.”

“She?” I asked.

Abigail smirked. “Aya. There’s no way she hasn’t shown herself to you. You’re far too interesting for her not to.”

“Wait a sec,” I said, remembering the conversation in front of Mary’s house. “I knew she was important but not that she is the system. Do you know her too?”

She giggled. “Yep. I’ve been around her for quite a while.”

“Anyhow,” I decided to table that conversation for later. “Let’s set our respawn points here so you can try your trick to get to the next room.”

Bind point set.

Abigail chuckled as she looked up at the same system update I got. “It looks like you did it for me. She just set my bind point here.”

“Me too,” I confirmed. “So, show me your trick to get through the lava.”

“Okay,” she replied. “But don’t laugh. I didn’t come up with the mechanics of this skill.”

Abigail packed away her fishing equipment and took a deep breath before plugging one nostril with a finger, blowing a giant bubble out of the other, and stepping inside. I was aghast as I watched her walk inside the thing like it was an organic Zorb Ball. She headed straight for the magma and, before I knew it, was out of sight. It took a few minutes to realize she made it and wasn’t coming back, so I re-equipped the lava proof armor and hopped in.

It was quite long and I had to remind myself several times that I didn’t need to breathe. Even with practice, my body wanted to draw air. I came up in a similar room to the one we fought the shark in. Only this one had a cave on the far end.

Abigail waited patiently for me to get out of my space suit. Her bubble was nowhere to be found.

“Did you see any monsters?” I asked, looking around cautiously.

“Not a one,” she replied, pointing to the cave. “I suspect they are down that way.”

Together, we took out our weapons and proceeded. For me, I replaced the ice pick with the obsidian pickaxe. It dealt quite a bit more damage and had the effect of boosting my destruction. On my offhand, I decided to try out the crystalline shield even though I had no skill for it. Throwing up a shield-covered arm to ward off danger beats nothing. That was the thought, at least.

Abigail surprised me. While she still used the heavy mallet in her offhand, she carried the new obsidian fishing rod, complete with a wicked-looking hook in her main hand. I was about to ask her how she intended to fight with it when we entered the next room, which was the last thing we expected to find.

“Um, did somebody hide a secret laboratory in the middle of a volcano?” Abigail asked, wiping her feet out of reflex on the doormat at the entrance

Stolen story; please report.

In front of us was something out of a sci-fi novel. A well-lit room was lined with computer consoles overlooking a large window. Beyond was another magma chamber, only this one had a large glowing rod pistoning in and out of it. I wasn’t sure if it was a drill or some kind of infernal machine powered by the core of the planet.

“What do we do?” Abigail asked, walking ahead of me to look over the computer console.

It wasn’t like a normal computer with keyboards. Instead, there were a series of multicolored unlabeled buttons below a row of four gauges measuring temperature, pressure, volume, and depth. The only button that looked out of place was large, red, and trapped under a glass panel. I was sorely tempted to press it.

“They are all high normal,” I said after checking the gauges. “Do you think we have to mess something up to get to the next boss?”

“I wonder where whoever runs this place is,” Abigail said, looking around. “There’s a door over here. Maybe we aren’t supposed to do anything yet.”

“Perhaps,” I said, eyeing the red button. “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

“What if you can’t un-press the button?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Respawn and start over?”

“Or we could check this way first and come back if we don’t find anything,” she suggested.

“You’re no fun,” I pouted. “But fine. Let’s see what’s behind door number two.”

I wasn’t trying to argue. We were a team. Beyond the door was a long hall that led to another door. That led outside into the chamber we saw through the window. Stairs wrapped around the control leading down into the magma. We had no choice but to double back while the magma blocked our path.

Abigail lingered for a moment, taking several steps down the stairs. “Do you suppose there’s a lava monster down there?”

“There better be,” I replied. “What’s the point of a dungeon with no monsters?”

She chuckled. “This might be a puzzle instead of a boss. Maybe we have to press the buttons in a specific order.”

“But what order?” I asked. “None of the buttons were labeled.”

“We’re not pushing the red one,” she said firmly.

“Fine,” I sighed. “So what do you suggest?”

We walked back to the room, and she inspected the panel again. “It looks like there’s a few buttons under each gauge. These go with pressure, and these go with temperature. Oh, and red stops everything.”

“You know which one I want to push,” I said, standing back to let her choose.”

“Maybe,” she replied. “But only if nothing else works. Do you want to start with temperature or pressure?”

“Let’s go pressure,” I said. “I want to see something explode.”

Abigail examined the buttons beneath the pressure gauge for a moment. There were four of them. Outside of being various colors, there was no indication of what each did. The color options were yellow, orange, blue, and black.

“I don’t know which one to push,” she admitted after hovering over them for an eternity.

I walked over and mashed my finger on the orange one. “It doesn’t matter which one we try first.”

Something clicked into place, and the lava shaft lurched before resuming its pumping motion. The surface of the magma bubbled more than usual and the gauge pushed into the red but nothing drastic happened.

“Next!” I announced, slamming down the blue button.

Abigail was frozen as I pushed the buttons, staring out the window at the massive piston. Water jetted out of a tube near the ceiling and cascaded down the piston into the magma. The bubbling surface hissed and exploded as the cold water clashed with the molten rock, causing the line on the pressure gauge to go down. Eventually, a crust formed on the magma but the piston kept driving into it, churning the blackened magma with every thrust. The pressure gauge crept back up.

“I think we have to push buttons on all the gauges,” I announced.

Abigail looked at me and sighed. “Fine. Push what you want.”

With carte blanch permission granted, I searched for a button to press. Pressure was fun the other gauges needed some love too. I walked over to one labeled depth and pushed a white button. Outside, the level of lava began to drop. Water still poured along the piston which was still churning the lava.

“I think I understand how it works,” I said, after pushing another button. “The colors don’t mean anything.”

“What do you mean?” Abigail asked with her nose pressed up against the glass to try and see the stairs outside.

“The colors are just there to throw us off,” I explained. “What really matters is the order of the buttons. Each one has a similar function on its respective gauge.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she sighed. “When you pressed the blue one, water came out. But when you pressed the white one the level dropped. Those two are in the same place.”

“You’re right,” I replied. “And then I pressed this one and the temperature dropped. So the same button on all three consoles dropped the temperature, pressure, and level of the magma. I’m gonna guess that this button will reduce the flow rate by a similar amount.”

“Okay,” she conceded. “Now that you figured out what the buttons do, how do we get to the next boss?”

“That’s the tricky part,” I sighed. “I think this is a puzzle. We need to make all the levels the same. I just don’t know if we should go high or low. I also don’t know what the red button is for. Is that to reset the puzzle, or bail us out if we make it blow up?”

Abigail shrugged. “Try something and find out.”

“Even the red button?” I asked.

She let out a huge sigh. “Fi~ine! Even that one.”

In the end, I opted not to press the red one. I experimented with lowering the four settings equally, taking time to watch what happened outside while keeping a close eye on the gauges. As I expected, the level of the lava slowly lowered, while cooling and solidifying. The pumping of the piston kept the surface broken into chunks, allowing the water to seep through the cracks and cool even more magma.

Suddenly, the whole place shook. The piston continued pounding the floor which was now devoid of magma and started to warp. That’s when I realized I needed that red button. I pulled back the protective glass case and slammed the button like I was trying to win a prize on a game show. Everything ground to a halt. When it all settled, I checked the gauges and looked out the window. All that was left was the broken rubble of the hardened rock scattered across the floor. The magma was nowhere to be seen. There was, however, a sealed hatch in the middle of a pair of drains.

Your Perception has gone up (1).

A flourish of music played and a loud click came from behind us, causing Abigail and I to spin on the spot. In the far wall of the room, a panel had slid aside, revealing a treasure chest.