Rayna groaned, blinking her eyes open. She must have fallen asleep after the attack. Every inch of her ached, but at least she wasn’t on fire anymore.

For the second time since entering the dungeon, Rayna found herself in need of a new set of clothes. How did the people of Ember afford hunting?

Maybe they were just more careful than Rayna.

You’re awake.

Rayna sat up, her joints creaking with the effort. “Unfortunately. What was that thing?”

She checked her notifications, hoping she got a message like she had with the first two chests.

You received a ???? (Legendary).

“Well, that’s not very helpful,” Rayna muttered. “At least I managed to get an upgrade.”

The creature was a Lesser Fire Sprite; a young Elemental of the fire alignment. It’s rampage was a byproduct of too much time in stasis.

“Wasn’t I supposed to get an item from that box?” Rayna didn’t think creatures counted as items.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Elementals are not objects, nor are they property of the System to give away as it pleases. It should have been released within fifty years of its offer to bond if a suitable player could not be found, but something seems to have gone wrong. I’d estimate that the Fire Sprite has been in stasis for at least a hundred years, perhaps more.

“So, I traded a rare chest for a near death experience. This just keeps getting better.” Rayna opened a portal to give herself some light before she pulled on a new set of clothes, examining her cloak for damage. It was a little singed around the edges, but it was slowly repairing itself.

The tent was not so lucky. It lay in ruins, and judging by the state of it, the tent didn’t have the same self-repair feature as her cloak.

The Lesser Fire Sprite attempted to bond with you, but due to the state of your core, it was unable to. It granted you a boon and left. I have also replaced your chest, as it was a System error that left you without a suitable item. I have placed it in your Soul Realm.

Rayna wrinkled her nose. “You’re nuts if you think I’m opening another one of those.”

Why not?

“Because the last one almost got me killed,” Rayna said. “I’m not testing my luck while I’m still stuck in a hole with a bunch of rats. Pandora’s box is staying closed until I can deal with whatever comes out to bite my head off.”

I suppose that’s reasonable…

The System didn’t seem to have anything else to say, so Rayna turned to her Character Sheet instead. The System said that the Fire Sprite had granted her a boon, and since she couldn’t find anything new in her Soul Realm, it was probably an ability.

Most of it was the same as last time she checked. Her Core’s recovery had jumped to 50% but besides being unable to bond with the Elemental—which she didn’t want to do anyway—she hadn’t really figured out what the core was for yet.

The most notable change was a new section titled ‘resistances’.

Resistances

Fire — Level 10

Cold — Level 10

“Shouldn’t those be under traits?” Rayna asked.

Unlike your species trait Immunity to Poison, the resistances can be earned and improved. If you improve your fire resistance to the highest level, it will be moved to your trait section with the title ‘Immunity to Fire’.

In addition to Rayna’s new resistances, she gained one skill and one spell.

(Spell) Fireball — Shoot a ball of fire at your enemies. (Damage is proportional to your proficiency level and your Intelligence.)

Proficiency: 0%

Cost: 25 MP

Base Damage: 50 HP

Multiplier: 150%

Chance to Inflict Burning: 5%

(Skill) Night Vision — Allows the player to see in the dark.

Proficiency: 0%

Duration: 1 hour

Cooldown: 1h 10m

Rayna recognized the Night Vision skill. It was the same one that Daria had used in the Obsidian Forest. The Fireball spell was probably the same one that she had seen some of the mages use back in the tutorial.

Finally, Rayna noticed a new title, but the description was peculiar.

Friend of Elementals — You helped an out of control Sprite at great personal risk. The Sprite has marked you as a friend. Elementals that you meet in the future will be able to see this mark on you and may act more favorably towards you.

There weren’t any added stats for it, just the title and the vague description.

Regardless, Fireball and Night Vision were more than enough to make the ordeal worth it. Rayna used the latter, and the room visibly brightened in her vision. She couldn’t tell if the skill made everything black and white, or if the cave just lacked any color, but either way, she could now see where she was going.

She let her portal close and there was no noticeable change in the lighting.

That’s one problem solved.

Rayna threw her ruined tent into her Soul Realm just to keep from littering. She had a good chunk of her Mana left, thanks to the portal’s very slow use of MP. She would have to experiment to figure out the exact amount, but for now, she was more interested in making it out of the dungeon.

Rayna had a feeling that Fireball was going to make that task much easier.

* * *

It took Rayna less than a day to find the boss room. The Fireball spell took a little getting used to, but it tore through the monsters like water through tissue paper.

She found another safe zone, but the battle was anticlimactic. Aris, the Second Keeper wasn’t nearly as difficult to beat after Rayna burned the webs off the walls and the fireballs did enough damage that the battle only lasted a few minutes. Even the explosion at the end had less impact thanks to Rayna’s new fire resistance.

It almost cost her another pair of clothes, but she remembered at the last second to pull her cloak to cover her. After a bit of experimentation, she realized that the size adjustment feature was actually fast enough to use in battle, she could shorten it so it wouldn’t get in her way, and then lengthen it when she needed to hide from a spell.

The more she learned about runes, the more she was growing obsessed with them. They were the only thing on Ember that seemed to work as expected.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

After the battle with Aris, Rayna had marked the location on the map in case she needed to backtrack, and moved on.

She had been a little worried that she might miss the boss room, since both safe zones she found were in hidden or obscured side tunnels, but the worry proved to be unfounded.

The boss room was impossible to miss.

Enormous double doors were carved into the stone. Engraved swirls and swoops glowed with magic, casting an eerie red light on the gold and silver embellishments that lined the outer rim of the door.

As soon as Rayna stepped into the small cavern that held the double doors, a notification popped up.

You have reached the room of Keleni, the Final Keeper. If you defeat him, you will be transported out of the dungeon. Beware, once you challenge the Final Keeper, there is no going back. If you aren’t confident in your success, turn back and seek another way out of this dungeon, for riches are useless in the hands of the dead.

Rayna tilted her head. The System had said something similar during the tutorial. She supposed it made sense, given that the dungeons were created by the System.

They were not.

Rayna frowned. “They weren’t?”

No. Dungeons are a natural phenomenon native to Ember. The System didn’t create them, nor can it affect their structure. It merely records and reports the status of the dungeon.

“Then what’s with the monsters all acting like game mobs?” Rayna asked. “I thought this was some sort of training ground, since all of the monsters have predictable move sets.”

I don’t have enough information to answer that… but perhaps this is simply how monsters behave…

Rayna wasn’t buying it. The Arachne and the willow had been nightmares to fight because there was no way to tell where they were going to strike next. In comparison, Arodra and Aris had been battles of attrition because it was easy to figure out their moves. Once you knew how they were going to attack, all you had to do was avoid them.

Whatever was going on inside the dungeon, it wasn’t something that she was going to figure out right now. Maybe when she helped the System regain some of its memories, she would find that she was right after all.

Rayna pushed the doors open and walked inside. The room was different than the rest of the caverns. The walls were smooth, as if cut with tools, and stalactites poked down from the ceiling in a more organized pattern, like someone had sculpted fake stalactites to match the aesthetic of the dungeon.

In the center of the cavern was an arena made of sand that sat a foot lower than the rest of the room. Rayna steered clear of it for now, since she was fairly certain that stepping into the arena would trigger the boss fight and she wanted to look around a little first.

The walls were covered in mosaics. Long swirls of color wrapped around the sconces that lined the wall, each of them using a different color material; blue, red, green, brown and white. The mural on the ceiling above the sand pit was swirling shades of brown that glowed slightly in the dim cavern.

Having completed her circuit of the room, Rayna didn’t stall any longer. She took a deep breath and walked to the center of the arena.

The door to the boss room slammed shut with an echoing bang. The sand in the arena started to vibrate and Rayna was fairly sure she had made a mistake.

She tried to move to stable ground, but falling stalactites forced her back onto the sand. She looked up, hoping to find a patch of ceiling clear enough to stand under but to her dismay, the stalactites regrew at regular intervals. By the time one of them hit the floor, there was already another in its place, ready to fall again.

Something to keep the player in the center, huh?

Rayna made up her mind. No matter what the System said, dungeons were not natural.

Has anyone ever told you that you’re a very mistrusting person?

The ground shuddered again and a circle of sand around Rayna started to glow red. She jumped out of the way just before a long scaly monster exploded out of the sand, traveling in an arc across the arena and diving into the sand on the other side. The monster’s Health bar disappeared with it, making it hard to see its name tag.

I can fix that.

The Health bar appeared in Rayna’s vision, staying in the top left corner like a video game. It was a bit disorienting at first, but she got used to it quickly.

[Keleni, the Final Keeper — Level 40]

[Species: Evolved Sand Wyrm]

Rayna’s eyes widened. “A Wyrm as in a dragon?!”

And the Wyrm was a good twenty levels above her at that.

“I thought this dungeon was supposed to be easy,” Rayna snapped, jumping out of another circle of red just before the monster appeared again. She tossed a fireball at it, barely hitting its tail before it disappeared back into the sand.

The attack didn’t cause much damage, but it was confirmation that she could catch it while it was above ground.

For a party. You are challenging it as an individual.

“I could have used that info earlier,” Rayna said, chucking another fireball at the monster as it emerged. This one hit it square in the face, dropping its Health more than three times the amount she had done when she hit its tail. It was still less than a twentieth of its Health bar, but it was significant enough that she could see the difference.

Critical hit?

Hits to sensitive areas like the face, heart and stomach will do more damage than attacks that hit extremities. Essentially, the closer the hit is to a vital organ, the more damage it will do.

“Go for the face, gotcha.” Rayna threw another fireball, missing the monster and hitting the wall instead. The resulting explosion sent several stalactites raining down from the ceiling and Rayna had to dodge flying bits of shattered rock.

She didn’t move in time when the monster emerged from the sand and the attack catapulted her across the room to slam into one of the wall sconces.

A few of her ribs cracked, pain exploding in her chest.

Rayna fell to the ground, stunned and trying to catch her breath.

She forced herself to move again when a stalactite nearly impaled her.

Moving back onto the sand, Rayna cast Fireball twice in quick succession, trying to get two hits in before the monster could dive again.

One hit the monster, the other flew past its eye, missing by a hair.

Rayna growled in frustration when the monster dove again.

“Is there a way to keep this thing above the sand? I’m never going to be able to kill it at this rate.”

As if it heard her, the monster’s Health bar refilled, erasing the little bit of progress she had managed to make.

“A healing spell on top of everything else? This is getting ridiculous.”

I believe the healing is in the sand. That seems to be why the monster continues to dive. Between the cover of the sand and its healing properties, it is perfect for a defensive attack style.

“Great, so the Wyrm is basically unkillable.”

There had to be a trick to this that she was missing. Even in a party, a group of Level 15 players wouldn’t be able to beat this thing if it kept dodging out of reach. So far, the dungeon had been logical. Every monster had a gimmick or trick that was predictable.

Maybe attacking the monster wasn’t the answer at all.

Rayna examined the room again as she dodged Keleni’s attacks. The boss didn’t seem too interested in killing her quickly. In fact, it barely even acknowledged her presence.

The only notable items in the room were the wall sconces, and the colorful mosaics that surrounded them. The unlit torches sat uselessly around the outer wall. Would lighting them do anything? That’s what you did in games, wasn’t it? Emma had talked about puzzles that basically made you fix things that weren’t right.

Worst case scenario: nothing happens.

Rayna picked a torch at random—the one with the blue swirl around it—and lit it with a fireball.

The torch went out so quickly that Rayna wasn’t sure if it had even lit in the first place, but it did have an effect. The mosaic on the ceiling turned blue, and watered poured down from the tiles.

Rayna abandoned the sand pit, taking her chances with the falling stalactites. The boss’ movements didn’t slow as it danced through the sandy mud. There must have been something to drain the sand out at the bottom of the pit, because within a few minutes, the whole thing was filled with clear blue water.

The monster’s movement pattern changed, switching from its rise and dive technique to swimming around like a shark, its long back ridges making ripples in the water.

Just to see what it would do, Rayna tossed a fallen stalactite into the pit.

The Wyrm pounced on it, shaking its head viciously to ‘kill’ the projectile.

“Nope. Not messing with that,” Rayna said with a nod.

She was fairly sure she knew what the brown torch would do, but she lit it anyway, just to make sure this wasn’t a coincidence.

As she expected, the pool drained of water and filled with sand.

“Blue is water, brown is sand,” Rayna muttered. “Red is fire?”

She wove through the falling stalactites to get to the red torch and lit it, hoping the Wyrm wasn’t immune as he had been to the other elements.

Rayna miscalculated. Fire didn’t spring up from the bottom of the pit as she had been expecting. Magma rained down from the ceiling.

Rayna cursed, using her staff to block stalactites instead of dodging them so she could get away from the glowing flow as fast as she could. She lit the water torch and water poured onto the magma, solidifying it into a solid slab of rock.

At least that might keep the monster under the sand for a while.

But Rayna hadn’t even finished the thought before the Wyrm burst through the thin layer of cooled magma, showering Rayna is shards of obsidian glass.

Pinpricks of pain flared to life all over Rayna’s skin and though she healed the wounds, the glass was stuck underneath the newly grown skin, hurting every time she moved.

“Oh shit, that was dumb!” Rayna said through gritted teeth. She needed to end this quickly before the pain got to be too much.

The remaining torches were white and green. Rayna dismissed the green one immediately. It was the same shade as the Azutin mucus and she didn’t have enough Mana to heal through acid exposure. Even if it turned out to be something as minor as vines, Rayna wasn’t willing to risk it.

She lit the white torch and this time it stayed lit. Wind picked up in the room, nearly throwing Rayna off her feet. Stalactites were tossed in unpredictable patterns, causing some new and colorful bruises on any part of Rayna unfortunate enough to be in the way.

When the wind died down, so did the noise and for a disoriented moment, Rayna wasn’t sure what had changed. Then she looked up at the perfectly still stalactites hanging from the ceiling. She almost panicked, thinking that the boss had reset but when she rushed to the edge of the arena, she found the Wyrm slithering around in an empty pit.

It was deeper than she thought; almost fifty feet. The monster didn’t seem too disturbed by its change in situation, moving similarly to when it had been in a water pit.

Rayna sank in relief. She could just kill the boss from a distance. She tossed a fireball at Keleni, a frown settling on her face when it veered off course. An experimental probe with her hand almost dragged Rayna down into the pit with the Wyrm. It wasn’t empty; it was filled with rushing wind that seemed to flow back and forth in unpredictable patterns.

Rayna sat down and closed her eyes, trying to figure out what to do next. She had thought air was the answer, but apparently there was more to it.

Was it a combination? The white torch hadn’t doused itself like the other torches. Maybe she had to go in a specific order.

Rayna took her time considering the combinations, trying to find one that made sense. The monster seemed to be immune to everything she threw at it. She didn’t need something that would kill it, she needed something that would hold it still.

The answer came in the form of sharp pain as she jostled one of the shards of glass in her arm. The Wyrm had managed to burst through a thin layer of obsidian, but who was to say it could get through a pit full and if she got the timing right…

Rayna lengthened her cloak and wrapped it around herself. She had fire resistance, but she didn’t think it did anything against molten rock.

She lit the red torch. The temperature in the room rose rapidly as magma poured into the pit. The Wyrm rose and dove in an attack similar to the sand, only this time each dive splashed Magma over the side of the arena walls.

Rayna watched and waited for just the right moment and when she saw the red pulsing circle that warned of the boss’ return, she lit the water torch.

Water poured down from the ceiling, blinding Rayna with a rush of blistering steam.

Rayna felt like a cooked goose by the time the water stopped, and to her delight, instead of a pool of water in the pit, she found a very angry Wyrm stuck in a solid mass of obsidian glass.

The monster had only been a few inches above the ground when it solidified around him.

Rayna didn’t hesitate. She started chucking fireballs at the monster as fast as she could. When she ran out of Mana, she switched to her staff.

Thankfully, the Wyrm didn’t explode as it died, it just sort of melted into the floor. Rayna sat down on the glass floor, frowning at the empty spot in relieved confusion.

She did it? It was dead?

A notification popped up with her reassurance.

You have defeated Keleni, the Final Keeper, and cleared the dungeon Caverns and Cave Rats. Your rewards have been added to your Soul Realm and you will be teleported to the front entrance.

Thank you, player, for your service to Ember.