It... felt... like...this...

Was..

It.

...

...?

Sensation. A sharp poke that brought reality crashing back. A reflective mana tapping her very essence. Delta twitched as something broke the time dilation over her own mind.

“I like your grit, but there’s biting more than you can chew and suffocating yourself in dessert,” a voice broke through the endless loop. A woman had simply walked out of thin air. Silver hair, amused sculpted features... too beautiful to be real.

She reached in and pulled Delta out of the pedestal as if grabbing a fish stuck in a net.

“Who... are you?” Delta said slowly, the connection to her dungeon coming clearer now and giving her energy through the decaying dungeon veins in here.

The once Silver dungeon...

“Sil...ver?” Delta asked and the woman snorted.

“No. Don’t let the hair fool you. I used to be a different colour. My name is Lorsa and you, little step-sister are a long way from home,” the woman said with a sigh.

This Lorsa was a dungeon but not.

She was old, but new.

She was strong but weak.

Lorsa was sad but she was determined.

“You should come to my dungeon and have cake,” Delta said the first thing that came to her mind. Her most base thoughts... her first instincts in a stressful situation.

Lorsa smiled and they were moving through the Dungeon system links, bouncing between dungeons like bounce pads. This was how Lorsa ‘teleported’. Her control was years above Delta’s, however. She could make sharp turns with ease and the other Dungeons moved to get out of her way.

“The good news is that you for a few minutes managed a dungeon with about x34 amount of levels of your own and didn’t instantly snap. That means you’re tough,” Lorsa complimented. Delta still felt groggy... confused as the tunnels around them shot past like stars in the sky.

“Bad news?” she asked, frowning.

Lorsa’s frown grew and Delta decided she would have to add ice-cream to the offering table.

Under her silver hair, like lines on her skull, the glint of diamond sparkled in the passing light.

“You set off every alarm on the way down,” Lorsa said simply.

Oh... Delta didn’t suppose that was very good, now was it?

---

The gleaming tower was a marvel of stone and rare imported glass from the desert, farmed from the fabled Ruby Dungeon of beauty. The constructs had been infused with rare glassmaker mana, making them permanent.

The appearance was open, airy, and approachable.

The stairs leading up were physically exhausting but brisk. One could pay a small fare at the entrance gate for the platform that would lift them up as they relaxed on benches. It was affordable so it really was a choice of endurance vs time.

Along with the ten free rides around noon each day, it was all very liked.

Such was the way to the Fairplay Tower.

Near the top, but not quite the top floor, Director Ripdoy looked out the window over the expanding town of glinting glass and streamlined mage colleges.

Water mages would be going to the sewage treatment plant along with fire mages to the waste management.

Local air mages would collect the spill off and fill them back into blocks that Fairplay would take back and feed to the Smog Dungeon to the east. A long trip to simply dump waste, but it was the only dungeon that naturally developed such a... taste.

The dungeon was an amenable one. Keeping to its word and the deal they had struck. One of the smoother deals, but that might be due to the gluttonous nature of the Dungeon rather than their own negotiation tactics.

The sheer profits they made off enchanted air masks were also not to be ignored, so Ripdoy considered the journey of waste to be worth it.

His door opened and he looked over his shoulder to see a lanky boy shuffling in, holding a tea tray. It shook, but at least there’d be no more stains on his expensive rug this time.

“Gentle, come in boy,” he beckoned and the nervous teen with dull brown hair and a uniform he still struggled to fill out did so, managed to put the tray down without spilling anything this time. Ripdoy internally sighed in relief.

The tea was a bitter sort, but Ripdoy had grown to enjoy many flavours in his years.

“Sir, a report from upstairs in the Manatracer came in. They need to see you immediately,” Gentle said, not stammering. Ripdoy nearly promoted him on the spot. How far the boy had come from the stuttering clumsy idiot he had taken under his wing.

“Very good, Gentle. Stay here and enjoy some tea. Anyone comes looking, you know what to do,” he instructed. It had not been his intent to turn Gentle into an assistant of sorts, but it just worked out that way. The boy seemed happier when he was elbow deep in work, so he didn’t have the heart to actually hire someone to take the duties away from Gentle.

“S-sir?” the boy asked before he was out the room. Ripdoy turned back with an arched brow.

“If the Manatracer is acting up then it means a new Dungeon... a strong one,” he said, not actually asking anything.

“Gentle, remember not to dawdle with your words, lad,” he reminded and the boy straightened up, saluting.

“Sir! I want to know if I can finally join a scouting expedition?” he asked, unable to hide his excitement.

Ripdoy brushed his silvery beard, unable to quite hide his frown. Men and women could legally join up at the age of 18, however, special permission from a guardian could allow one at 16 to join the various groups.

Since Ripdoy was Gentle’s guardian in the eye of the law... he could grant the boy’s wish.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

He managed a small smile.

“Let me think about it and we’ll discuss it over dinner,” he promised and Gentle’s face lit up before turning serious.

“Sir!” he saluted again and Ripdoy left the room, unable to stop the smile as he felt the small childish necklace he wore of a seashell that Gentle had made for him when he was a lad.

The shell was fragile and in all his fights, escapades, and adventures, Ripdoy had collected more than a few scars by protecting it from a fall or an attack by a monster.

It was also heavy as he thought of Gentle in those same dangers.

He reached the Manatracer on the top floor. A massive singular room dedicated to a massive globe-like device that was the collaboration projection of geomancers, mana-purists, dungeon items, and one woman.

Jenia Visp

Her business hair was up in a bun as her sole ‘talent’ controlled the entire globe. The other people in the room were here for maintenance, recording, and aiding Jenia where they could with their own talents. She turned at his entrance. Their uniforms were similar. Dark green with white trim on the neck. His had a sword at his hip. Hers a hand crossbow.

The rotation image of the world split and unfolded into its proper shape of a rough rectangle.

“I don’t know why you insist on the round mode. A round planet just looks... wrong,” Ripdoy said gruffly.

“I wouldn’t mind a world where walking forward doesn’t meet a dead-end,” Jania said easily, her voice coming out in a slight lisp. Her quirk was long familiar to Ripdoy, comforting even.

“I like to see where my world ends then build a bridge further out just to spite the void,” Ripdoy shrugged, the same old argument like a greeting between them.

“Bridges? You mean dungeons that fall hopefully there or here and expand one realm or another. We’re lucky Dungeons don’t crash into cities...” Jania said with exasperation. Ripdoy watched her settle into her chair, the commanding dock that would control the machine at full power.

“Not even the Kobolds will build cities on the extreme edge. It’s bad enough we lose good people to the Dive Syndrome every year, but we don’t need whole cities exploding or going over the edge due to shoddy foundations,” Ripdoy leaned against another chair as Jania rose up, a stone pillar lifting her chair up so she was equal level to the map.

“Dive Syndrome isn’t exactly a disorder. People just... leap when they see the abyss. There’s no medical explanation or malady of the mind. Healthy, sane people just jumping... it’s bizarre,” Jania admitted as she slowly connected ribbons of her mana to the map where the machine would begin connecting her to millions of mana threads in the sky.

Like little footprints in the snow... mana left a trail if one could touch it. Jania was thought to be a talentless girl until Ripdoy lifted her high enough. Then she was a goddess.

“Well, they all have one connection. They’re either adventurer, children of adventurers, or have a strange blood gift,” Ripdoy reminded as he waited. There was no point asking Jania what was going on.

She was the type of woman who didn’t hand in a report until she had enough facts.

Jania disliked wasting time. Her hands began to weave, brushing multi-coloured threads here and there. Like a harp player playing a melody only she could hear.

“Did you hear about the tree down south?” Jania asked and Ripdoy had, but he merely let her talk.

About how the tree had a whole branch snapped off as if something godly had issues with it. The branch took off, flying to parts unknown to seed itself.

About the monster that chased it.

How dungeon generation was down by almost 30% this year... monsters seem down as well...

Ripdoy was a listener when he didn’t have to give commands. He liked the way Jania talked with professionalism. Not peppering her words with too many opinions that might show biases at work.

Facts were strong and true and they both appreciated that.

Then Jania froze up all at once, following threads as magical equipment near consoles went off.

“Sir, Ma’am! Leftover wards in Dungeon 03 just went live. They’re out of date, but something tried to power up the dungeon and- gone! It’s gone, but the whole place lit up,” the man in the corner... Hazman. He had two little girls if Ripdoy remembered right.

Dungeon 3... he remembered Silver. Ripdoy remembered pain and the screaming of the rooms as metal peeled itself off walls in rage.

He remembered how it had broken all the rules.

“Send mages, send scouts. I want reports. Check the outposts. Monsters may attack to feed the dungeon if it managed to survive,” he said with authority.

Jania was giving him looks, concern.

Dungeon 3 had not shattered. 03 did not agree to their terms, so raw and full of holes in those early days...

Dungeon 03 got up one day and walked out of its dungeon and killed that woman.

A contract servant.

Then the core... just vanished.

It was the most harrowing thing Ripdoy had experienced with a dungeon. Abominations were just that. Monsters far too gone to let live.

03 was the worst.

It was far too human and it still did terrible things. It was easy to put down dungeons that created viral plagues, insect swarms... monsters so putrid they tainted the land they walked on.

03 showed them something much worse.

It showed dungeons played a game with rules, but they were just playing.

And they were all playing too and when they decided the game ended? Then there was no fair play. Jania’s hand snagged on something so vibrant it was hard to look at.

A thrumming orange thread.