<~> CHAPTER 67 - LUNA

When the dungeon around me lit up again, the plain grey-white walls had turned to a familiar open field in the middle of a snowstorm. The only thing that kept me on the same path were the wooden fences that I knew from past experience with this place couldn't be crossed. Dammit.

This place was familiar. It was the same snowstorm I had experienced every time I came through this floor alone and the same one that often haunted my dreams. Not lately though. I smiled at the brief respite in my heart as an image of Helena came to mind. I rubbed my thumb along the ring on my index finger, a common tick I had picked up soon after I started wearing it.

I flared my magical aura and coalesced a ring of fire two arm spans around me. The task came easier to me since I had begun to wear this new sash, it makes continuous spells like this easier to maintain. That helps considering I rarely needed to use this spell, my allies, even before Helena joined, do far more to keep the enemies away from me than this barrier does, but it would do fine for now. I rolled my shoulders and trudged through the snow as the fire barrier warmed me.

Without stopping I slung my pack off one shoulder and dug out one of the guiding rods. I hoped that this wouldn't be a long floor this time, but my version of this floor had a tendency to last longer than most of the others and I was the last to be separated. The sparks came to life and started to drift along one of the forks ahead. I moved forward and continued to stumble through the snow.

Eventually, I came to the place that always filled me with anxiety when I looked upon it. My father's manor. Or, a twisted dungeon's interpretation of it. I readied two balls of fire behind me as I pushed the double doors open. Like every time I had come to this floor, the shades were waiting to ambush me here as soon as I stepped inside.

Two faceless maids clashed against my fire barrier and were held back long enough for the spells I had readied to crash into them.

"Your father wants to see you in his study." One of the maids calmly said even as she stumbled backward and fell onto the floor in a burning pile.

"Go take a bath! You've dirtied your clothes again playing with those urchins!" The second one said with a bit more spirit, even though its tone was completely mismatched with its reaction as it also fell to the floor in a heap.

I closed the doors behind me and sealed out a lot of the cold, then I took a moment to look down at the two faceless maids lying in a pile of char. These monsters hadn't been a challenge in a long time but part of me always felt guilty every time I fought them. This place was trying to make me hate my childhood even more than I already did. I didn't like most of the maids my father had hired to raise me but I hadn't wanted to kill them. After coming through here so many times though, my predominant emotion as I was forced to navigate this place, was apathy. The most the dungeon was able to do to me anymore was annoy me by picking at my sad past.

A sad past that I had been forced to confront many times over before I had even come to this floor. What else was I supposed to think about when entire days would go by without any conversation?

I looked away from the piles of ash I had left by the door and continued down the hall after the glowing sparks of the guiding rod. The first time I had come here I had wanted to burn the entire place down. I quickly learned that this place was fireproof, the rugs, tapestries, and paintings just wouldn't catch. The part of me that would have gained great catharsis by burning down my childhood home again was left unfulfilled.

Three more maids charged at me from one of the rooms I passed and once again slammed into my barrier of fire. I charged a fire circle under them as they impotently wailed on my barrier until it had collected enough to torch the three of them all at once. An efficient use of mana for enemies too weak to crack the barrier I had erected for myself. The three shadow maids were instantly vaporized, not even having the time to barb me with one of their taunts that irked me so much as a child. None of it was that bad growing up but this place was slowly eroding any attachment I did have to the maids that had raised me. I shook my head and continued on. I had been through here enough times now that I knew none of these rooms were worth looking through. The most I would find in them reminders that I did not want to look at.

The guiding rod led me into one of the rooms that was made to look like a ballroom. Music was playing as if there was a grand party going on but the room was empty. Walking through rooms like this always made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but larger elite monsters never came for me here. It was just more meaningless tension that had faded away after a few times of walking through this place. Why did the dungeon try to get under our skin like this? What meaning did it serve? Even when the monsters of this floor are manageable for hunters to kill, many of them still refuse to travel this floor because of the hardship it brings so many people. Why would the dungeon even want that? Does the dungeon want a majority of hunters to languish on the first five floors? Everything I had heard about dungeons up until now suggested the opposite, they wanted to lure people in deeper. So why would it create a floor that proved so insurmountable to so many people? I didn't understand.

"Your father is very cross with you tonight young lady! Go to his study immediately!"

"You dirtied another dress! You never act like a proper lady, go and change this instant!"

"Why would the lord even keep a beastkin child?"

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I frowned as another of the faceless maids fell to cinders. That last one had hurt. I shook my head. It's not like my father ever wanted me anyway, if it hadn't been for the mother I had never known, I'm sure I would have been left on the doorstep of a temple.

"You're turning into a harlot, just like your mother."

I just sighed as I dispatched another of them. Who knows if my mother was a harlot? Certainly not me. The only one who might have known that was my father, and he's dead now.

My fingers absently trailed along the scars on my throat as they often did without me realizing it, whenever I thought of him or my childhood. The only thing I knew about my mother was that she must have been wealthy enough to convince my money-obsessed prick of a father to take care of me. He certainly didn't keep me around as long as he did because he loved me or saw any benefit to raising me. Why had I lived with him in the first place? My father had never loved me as far as I knew.

The sparks finally settled on the familiar door of father's study. The first time I had come here I had nearly been in tears. Seeing this door again had made me anxious and fearful. Now it just made me feel... empty and hollowed out. In some ways coming through this place had helped me, in others, it just continued to tear away at me bit by bit. I pulled the study door open and stepped inside the boss arena.

A giant and larger-than-life image of my human father rose above me next to his gigantic desk. The image I had of him made me feel small and inferior, even if by the end he hadn't even been that much taller than me. This version of him reflected the former. A manifestation of my memories of him, of a man that I had once wanted love from, but learned to hate instead. If the scars on my throat were any indication, the feeling had been mutual.

"She left me because of you!" His booming voice declared.

The giant man dashed forward at me and slashed with his sword. My fire shield cracked as it caught his blade but I didn't even bother to try and dodge it. This monster was too fast for me to dodge. Through trial and error, I learned that the easiest way to deal with this boss was just to reinforce the shield with more mana between each strike. Normally it would be too costly a maneuver to employ, but I knew my bolts of fire would tear through him quickly enough that it wouldn't matter.

I wasn't even entirely sure why the monster took the form of my father in the first place. It hadn't even been me that killed him that night, I always found it odd that I would have to do it in this nightmare. Maxwell was the one who had dragged me back to the manor in a rage and decapitated my father after Piper had finished healing me. Once he was dead I knew someone might come looking for us so I burned the entire manor down to the ground. We had to leave town but I hated that place anyway. I was so emotionally raw that night I hadn't even considered the maids who were still in the building. Thankfully, I later learned that no one else had died in the blaze I had started that night. I didn't like the maids, but I hadn't wanted to kill them.

The first time I had been through here I had felt triumphant when I killed the shade of my father. It had been cathartic to kill a monster in his image with my own magic. By the fifth time, I had felt exhausted by it, by the tenth I just felt empty. After I kill him the last stretch of this floor will be on fire, a reminder of the aftermath of that night. After going through this a few times, walking through the burning manor, even that began to feel hollow. I have seen this manor burn down time after time coming through here, and now it just felt like... a waste. It had been childish to burn everything down in a fit of rage. It was hard to blame myself though, I had been nearly murdered by my own father that night. I'm not sure if burning everything down helped cover our tracks or not, but either way we had to leave and flee to Ironcastle.

A scream echoed through the study as one of my firebolts splashed against his giant torso, quicker than I could react he flailed his sword at me and cracked my barrier once again. I expended the mana to reinforce my protective shell and began to charge another fire bolt. But before I could finish the shade off, something strange happened.

The world lurched and with a sudden snap, the manor walls that had surrounded me turned back to the grey-white walls of the floor when you weren't alone. The giant shade I had been fighting moments ago fell over and evaporated into nothing... and then it was quiet.

Something was wrong. I looked around. The room I was in was large, much larger than the featureless hallways that you were forced to navigate normally on this floor. This room was the same dimensions as the giant study I had just been in but I've never seen a room this large when the walls were still plain.

After some time had passed I reluctantly let down my guard. I still kept up my barrier but I released the other magic I had been charging in case of an attack. This room was eerie now that all the sound of the snowstorm had suddenly vanished. I followed the sparks of the guiding rod through one of the two doors that had been in this room. When it looked like father's study it had only had one door... I felt as if I was being taught the secret to a street performer's trick...

I walked through the empty halls for a while. Despite the distance I traveled, I never came across another shade or another illusion on this floor. Everything was just... empty and bare. I didn't know what to make of that. I didn't know if this was something good or something bad. I had been through this floor many times and this was the first time anything even remotely like this had ever happened. The only thing I could think of, the only thing that felt different this time, was Helena. Had she done something to this place? Did the same thing that brought her to the dungeon do something here too? It felt silly to blame any peculiar happenings on the strange transforming wolf-woman but what else could explain such a sudden change?

Eventually, I made it to the exit and cautiously opened the door. Piper smiled at me warmly as she always did when we met back up after being separated on this floor. I smiled back at her, happy to be with my friends again. I was the last one to arrive, Piper looked exhausted and everyone else was sleeping. But as much as everyone probably needed the sleep, I didn't feel comfortable sleeping here just yet, after the floor had changed.

("Piper, we need to talk. Something happened to the last floor,") I told her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.