Hey, would you look at that, it’s somehow only half a week prior now…

By the ornate Mountain Dungeon’s gate, which stood at the end of a large garden within King Eskilder’s castle grounds, were two hugely-muscular men in sculpted chest armour and helmets made to look like the head of a bear: ears, teeth, snout, and all. Their forearms and legs were left bare, though a short skirt covered the area below their waists

Vagan had used some strange magic that moulded the darkness around him, allowing him to traverse up the side of the castle wall, while I’d simply leapt from below and landed within the roughly-seven-metres-above-ground garden. Somehow, the two guards had not noticed my landing, even though I flattened a bush with the colossal weight of my vessel. It seemed that their large metal helmets not only muted all sound, but also made it pretty much impossible to see, as they did not notice us until we were right on them, and by then it was too late for them to do anything before I swallowed both whole, devouring even their metal armour.

My companion/guide looked at me in a way that was hard for me discern the meaning of, then said, “I was just going to knock them out.”

“Oh,” I replied.

“What kind of stomach does your body have anyway? How did you swallow both that quickly?”

I tried a shrug of my toady shoulders, but it mostly just looked like I did a push-up. “I don’t know,” I told him, “this isn’t my real body and I don’t particularly understand how this one was made nor how it’s capable of most things.”

“I see,” was all he replied. It seemed obvious that he did not comprehend what I was saying, but it was a convenient way for him to shelve the conversation topic for perpetuity.

With the gate cleared of guards, I gave it a good scrutinising glare:

Name: Dungeon Gate

Occupation: Dungeon Gate

Species: Gateous Ornaticus Blockthewayitis (Gate (Door))

Level: 3/3

Alignment: Locked-and-idle

Faction: Blazing Blaine’s Dungeon

I wondered if Blazing Blaine was the name of the Core, but knew there was only one way to find out, so I tongue-punched the gate with such force that it shot inward on its hinges when the lock was sheared in half. A powerful echo flowed through the mountain from the concussive force of my strike.

“Let’s get inside and barricade it behind us,” Vagan advised.

It seemed a prudent idea, so I hopped beyond the threshold and once he’d entered as well, I used my tongue to forcefully shove the two sections of the gate back in place, before pulling a heavy stalactite from the ceiling and ramming it into the ground next to the gate, such that it made it impossible to open the gate until removed.

Vagan nodded in satisfaction, “They’ll need a battering ram to follow us now.”

“Have you been here before?” I asked.

“A few times on the first few floors, but never invited, obviously. My mentor used to bring me here to train.”

“Floors?”

“Do you not know how Dungeons are laid out?” he asked in return.

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“It seems I don’t. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what I expected.”

“Well, it’s a bit different from Dungeon to Dungeon, but they are always comprised of floors. Some go up, some go down. This one goes up. The top floor is supposed to be an open crater at the top of the mountain, you know, like an inactive volcano.”

“How do we get up there?”

“You want to go to the top?” he asked with a grin.

“Of course!”

“I’ll show you the way, but you’ll have to do most of the fighting. My skills are generally best served for humans.”

“Fighting?”

“Yeah? Do you really not know how these things work?”

I tried to shrug again and once again it did not produce a shrug…

“This Dungeon is full of flame-based monsters, like Fire Goblins and Fire Slimes, stuff like that. At the end of each floor is a mini-boss, and on the sixth floor is a proper boss. This pattern supposedly repeats up until the thirtieth floor, which is where the final Boss will be, within the volcano crater.”

“That seems simple enough,” I replied.

“I think only a few heroes have managed to reach the summit on floor thirty,” he cautioned me.

“How hard can it be?”

With Vagan riding on my back, I hopped eagerly into the first room of the first floor, where a mob of seven torch-wielding red-skinned goblins attacked me. With a single swipe of my tongue I sent them flying against the walls where they were turned to paste or buried under falling stalactites.

The next three rooms were a similar affair, and then came the first mini-boss, who was a hobgoblin called Erick-Svendson that wielded a burning wooden club. I tore him apart with a slash of my flensing claws, and he quickly disappeared in a flashfire, leaving behind a few small uncut rubies as reward.

The next two floors were a variation of the first one, with bigger groups of goblins and the mini-bosses just being an additional hobgoblin, such that floor three had three of them as the mini-boss.

When Vagan had pocketed the rubies that dropped as a reward, I couldn’t help but remark, “This design is kind of lazy, isn’t it? Even the floor layout is identical…”

He just shrugged, which I jealously hated him for being capable of, though, thinking back on my life as a Toad, shrugging hadn’t been something I’d been capable of back then, rather, it was a mannerism I had picked up from Imu.

I considered how much he would’ve yelled at me by now, if he had been here, but, in a way, I found that I missed his shrill voice and constant whining.

“Onward and up!” I announced, when Vagan climbed back onto my vessel.

Floor four and five introduced fire-slimes to the mix, but still insisted on using the fire-goblins, who were no stronger than the previous floors. The slimes were likewise quite weak and I couldn’t help but let out a groan of annoyance, when I found that the mini-boss of the fourth floor was just a hobgoblin riding a slime.

“All these slimy slimes and gobby goblins!” I raged. “This Core has no pizzazz! It’s all just so lazy and uninspired! 1/10! Bad Dungeon!”

A fat red-skinned goblin fell out of the ceiling, then aimed a filthy index finger at me.

“Hey, fuck you, buddy!”

“I’m not your buddy, goblin!”

“All you do is complain! It’s really rude!”

I tongue-punched the goblin and sent him flying, but when he hit the wall he just bounced off, seemingly unscathed by the hit. “What I think is rude,” I told him, “is making us go through the monotony of this terrible layout!”

“I worked really hard on it!” the goblin yelled back.

The way he seemed to imply that he was responsible for the Dungeon, made me immediately use my Appraisal on him:

Name: Blazing Blaine’s Goblin Chief #1

Occupation: Dungeon Core Mouthpiece

Species: Flame Goblin

Level: 15/15

Alignment: Possessed-by-hot-headed-Core

Faction: Blazing Blaine’s Dungeon

“You’re the Dungeon Core!?” I gasped.

The goblin stood up and put his hands on his hips. “That’s right! Of course, my true form is far too magnificent for you to behold, but you’ll also never make it to my Final Floor!”

I narrowed my big eyes at him, then said, “I’ll come find you and then we’ll see who’s the better Core!”

My words must have triggered some realisation in him, because he quickly used an ability I’d seen Imu utilise many times: the weird bubble between the fingers to create a Scope.

“How are you level three-hundred-and-sixty!?” he exclaimed. “You’re cheating!”

Vagan, who had stayed silent this whole time, looked down at me from where he lay atop my back. “No wonder I couldn’t tell what level you were… and it explains how you’re able to one-shot everything…”

The goblin mouthpiece went back to pointing at me, and yelled, “B-b-but yes! Come to my top floor and I’ll definitely win! But you won’t make it there, cause you’re weak and gross!” Then he pulled down the skin below his right eye and pointed his tongue at me, before disappearing into the floor.

“Vagan.”

“Yes?”

“Now we’re definitely going to the top floor! No one challenges me and gets away with it!”