Chương 94: (B2.30)

30) Leona Vinton Even after being warned, Leona wasn't sure what to think of how the four girls known as the Adventuring Party interacted. It certainly was an interesting sight, but she had little chance to actually enjoy it. True, her Level was much higher than the dungeon demanded for the second floor… but she was ultimately a researcher, not a dungeon diver or adventurer. Any of her spells could handle the threats here, but she really had no idea how to apply them.

She'd had to rely on the four identical girls to protect her while she provided simple and basic support barely worth bringing her in. Leona watched as one of the girls impaled a writhing centipede, while another silently stabbed it right behind the head. The coordination was eerie, just as she'd been warned, but it fascinated Leona. The girls didn't have any obvious means of communication, but they'd clearly found a way to tell what one another wanted.

She didn't believe their statement that they just anticipated what one another would do.

"This has been interesting," she said aloud.

"I don't see why you needed a spatial mage to come along though. So far this has not been notable. The lower floors do seem to be undergoing compression, but that shouldn't affect the top floors for a very long time. You may have been better off finding a dungeon expert."

"No, it is you we want," one of the girls replied. Leona recognized her as Scholar, as the others called her. She'd been very quiet for most of the trip into the dungeon, but Leona had seen her silently observing everything, as if the dungeon were changing every run. That shouldn't happen for the first two floors, but everything about this dungeon was wrong. The statement really sounded ominous, and Leona didn't like that one bit.

"Be careful, the footing is dangerous," Scout called from ahead. Then she vanished, along with Fighter, as if falling down a hole. The lack of panic told Leona that the two weren't in any danger, so she did as they suggested and approached slowly, edging up to a slope with scattered pebbles and debris upon it.

"Is this intentional? Like a trap?" Leona asked worriedly.

"Traps aren't supposed to really happen much on the first two floors… this dungeon is growing too fast."

"Coincidence, we think," Scholar replied as she did a controlled slide down the slope.

"The dungeon might know it is dangerous and leave it, but it did not appear to design it as such. The changes to the second floor are subtle and slow, so the dungeon must be following the rules." Leona whispered a few lynchpin words and floated down the slope without touching the pebbles, sighing as she landed lightly on the cavern floor.

"As far as we can tell, those rules are engraved into the dungeon's core. It can't break them, and we aren't even sure it can think, or even consider breaking them."

"Oh, it thinks," Scholar said without any hesitation.

"We are sure of that. We believe it also can break the rules if it wants to. It only avoids that because it knows that breaking the rules could get it destroyed. What we cannot figure out is how it knows these things. All dungeons seem to know the rules and they follow them so long as they are working correctly, but they can… bend the rules." Even though Leona knew Scholar had some obscure Class that specialized in dungeons, it was still hard to swallow the idea that she could learn all of this.

The girl wasn't even twenty, was she? Leona seemed to recall that the girl's birthday was next week. She wasn't sure what age that made her, but it wasn't that old. Helpfully, Scholar continued to explain.

"This is why we cannot tell you exactly what we want you to do. We could not risk it being overheard outside, and here in the dungeon it can overhear us. We are not even sure how much of the village and our home it can sense, but it is definitely linked to Onroc Anroll. We think this is why Merchant can shape the land." Leona just nodded, telling herself to have a long chat with Scholar in a place she knew could be safe from eavesdropping.

Whatever this Class was, it gave the girl confidence in speaking of mysteries people had long wondered about. Maybe it was assumptions, but Leona had a feeling there was something else going on there.

"We're here," Scout said quietly. She'd already cleaned the ichor off her dagger and sheathed it, now focusing on one craggy portion of the wall. Leona couldn't see what the difference was, but the redheaded rogue traced a finger very deliberately in a winding pattern.

"Finally ready, aren't we?" Acolyte held out a hand to stop Leona from stepping forward. Gently she pushed back and shook her head.

"You stay here, we don't know how the dungeon will react to this. You need to be here to make sure what we do sticks."

"What is it you want me to do, though?" Leona asked with a frown, staring at the younger girl. It was Scholar who answered, "Stand back and seal any open spatial tears. We have a feeling one of them will happen as soon as we get to work. If our theory is correct, sealing the tear should prevent the dungeon from expanding past the scar." Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Leona raised one eyebrow.

"Scar, what do you mean by-" The wall split open, and a river of mana roared into the chamber, so powerful that it nearly took physical form and bowled Leona over. The mage staggered, reaching for her known spells and hastily assembling a crude shield out of the pieces she knew.

It wasn't much, but it parted the wave enough to let it flow around her, although she could still feel the burning sensation of her body being saturated with the cloying thickness of mana more suitable for a dungeon's tenth floor than the second. She felt it, then. Whatever was behind the wall had folded space in on itself several times, and Scholar had somehow broken through whatever protections were in place and… tore it open.

Leona could feel Scholar doing something complicated, some enormous magical work that shouldn't be possible for a Tier 2 Class at all. Whatever it was, it made the rush of mana even stronger, causing Leona's barrier against it to fray. Seal the spatial tear. Even without knowing precisely what the girls were doing, Leona could work with this. Her mage sight flared to life, automatically dimming with the addition of a lynchpin word to block the mana saturation from blinding her.

What was left were the complex threads of a torn enchantment that she hurriedly stitched together, lacing the barrier back into place. Even as she worked, she caught a better look at what the quartet was doing. Acolyte bound all four together, and Scholar was using everything she could to burn through her mana to the point of injury, spreading the toll across the other three.

The outpouring of mana wasn't even everything available, as Scholar had gathered a significant amount of it and fashioned her own strange "plug" in the tunnel beyond, an intricate seal that Leona didn't have enough time to examine. Leona finished stitching together the edges of the invisible tear and tied them off. Borrowing enough mana that her own bones ached and burned, she seared the completion into the hasty patch, bonding the concentrated threads together.

She felt resistance for an instant, and some kind of powerful will behind it working to aid her in sealing the breach. It was just a feather light brush with another presence, but it was alien and powerful enough to send a tingle down her spine. Had she just touched the dungeon itself, with her magic? Her thoughts were interrupted as the entire second floor rippled, stone flowing like water in a convulsion throughout the tunnels and chambers.

Like a living thing, it contorted and twisted, the physical opening slamming shut an instant before the chamber spasmed and pinched closed. Leona was hurled back, releasing a scream at the spray of blood from her four companions filling the much smaller room. Greylan's Legacy More of the Greylans. The Four were inside it, and it knew they were searching once more. What they sought it did not know, but they never progressed. They never pushed to the third floor, in a frustrating caution that seemed strange to it.

Others had already found the third floor, already fought. One had died. But that one was not a Greylan. The power it gained was welcome, but merely a snack compared to the wealth that a single Greylan brought. It knew it could not just kill the Greylans, for that would stop them from coming. It needed cause, or to trick them into their own demise. Its creations could not stop themselves, they felt the need to tear the Greylans apart… but that could be dealt with. Well… most of its creations.

The distraction of its thoughts vanished as it watched the Greylans once again move through the second floor, this time with another being. It could sense this one was powerful… the magic the woman commanded was greater than any it had sensed inside it before. Yet her movements were clumsy and uncertain. She was very puzzling. This time, the Greylans were doing something at the edge of the floor. They were always doing something strange…

those four were more competent than the ones it had seen before, and it almost admired how they worked together. Perhaps it would not try to kill them, to see if they could enjoy every floor it had created. That would be pleasant. What was not pleasant was the sudden sensation of tearing within its being. One of the Greylans had done something to break apart the thin wall between the second floor and the winding tunnels that lay beyond it. Those were never intended for anyone to find, or to occupy.

They were for its use only, to feed and grow, to guide its own expansion. For the briefest instant, they lay exposed and vulnerable, like a blood vessel sliced open to the air. It did not bleed, but it still felt pain. Reaching for its power, the dungeon felt something else. Like cobwebs breaking apart, it grasped nothing for an instant, and then came the wave of aching emptiness. It stabbed right to the core, a sudden siphoning of its power torn away and then slammed shut, cut off as if it were never there.

Only a portion of its power. A significant portion, but it had plenty left. In the agony of its loss, the dungeon lashed out, the entire floor spasming and crashing down in parts. The wound had already been sealed, but the power coursing through the walls caused them to ripple, and without planning or intent, the cause of its pain was crushed and wiped out. Immediately it felt the rush of power. Four Greylans, all dying at once… that explosion of magic was more than it was prepared to hold.

It tried condensing it into crystals, expanding and compressing its floors, but the torrent was too much, too fast. It couldn't cope. It couldn't hold it all. Dimly, it was aware that the fifth, the non-Greylan, was alive and fleeing the dungeon. Unimportant. The dungeon did not want to do it, but it had to do something with all this power. It used its desperate last resort, and fed the remainder into its last hidden, secret storage. The place that had been strange of late. Not behaving the way that it wanted.

It had intended to examine the problem later, but now it just needed a place to shove all this new power. In spite of the small size of that secret receptacle—the one that it wasn't sure was supposed to exist—it greedily soaked up everything the dungeon gave it. More and more, until the torrent ebbed. It left the dungeon feeling stuffed and swollen, almost leaking the mana that it had taken. Its secret storage held almost as much as it had within its core! And then that storage… broke away.

That's the only way it could describe it. The sensation of being there was suddenly gone, and the dungeon was left with the confused absence of all that power it had just soaked up. It was rattled for a moment, as it realized that all that spare mana was no longer its own to use. Instead it was with… the storage. Then the horror set in.