Chương 118: Silence of the Sleeping Waves

Having crossed over onto the next island, Lloyd immediately summoned the chronometer, woven out of the familiar white sparks right in his open palm, and brought it closer to his face, studying the glowing numbers on the dial.

"A whole hour. Perfect." Even before the island had fully drawn near, Lloyd had already noticed how small it was — reaching the far edge would take no more than ten minutes of unhurried walking. That made things considerably easier, though of course it had no bearing on how soon the island itself would finally come to a stop, letting him move on to the next one.

Its small size, though, almost certainly meant the odds of running into monsters here were slim, which meant he could afford to act a little less cautiously than usual. Just in case, Lloyd summoned the Sword of the Worthless Warrior anyway, feeling the familiar weight of the hilt settle into his palm, and set off to scout the area, pushing into the sparse, thin forest covering most of the island, its branches creaking faintly in a wandering draft.

He was met only by tree trunks, gnarled and moss-covered, and the occasional muffled rustle of leaves — not the slightest hint of any monster's presence, no growl, no tracks in the damp ground carpeted with rotting pine needles. The silence here was so thick that Lloyd could clearly hear his own footsteps crunching over dry twigs, along with the steady beat of his own heart.

But suddenly, somewhere in the distance, through a gap between the trees, Lloyd noticed something strange — a blurred, glinting patch that didn't fit the island's usual scenery at all, like some foreign insert stitched into the monotonous green-and-brown fabric of the forest.

"Could that be..." Quickening his pace, nearly breaking into a run, he headed straight for what he'd spotted in the distance, pushing through sparse undergrowth that caught at the edges of his outfit with thin, thorny branches, and finally emerged from the dense thicket onto a small clearing bathed in dim, diffused light, as though deliberately fenced off from the rest of the forest by a tight ring of trees.

"No way." In the middle of the clearing spread a small lake, unremarkable at first glance, save for one deeply strange detail — its perfectly smooth, mirror-like surface showed no sign of a single insect, not the faintest ripple, not the smallest splash, as though the water weren't real at all, but some skillfully rendered, frozen illusion of water, painted by a talented yet utterly indifferent hand.

Even the light breeze drifting across the clearing, stirring the grass right at the shoreline, left this unnaturally still surface completely undisturbed. But what mattered far more was what sat at the very center of this strange lake, seemingly frozen outside of time itself. Right in the middle of the water, on a tiny rocky islet, rose a heap of stones piled atop one another, split by a single but fairly wide fissure, filled with absolute, impenetrable darkness.

This wasn't an ordinary shadow cast by the rocks — the darkness itself let through not a single beam of light, as though it were a genuine tear in the fabric of reality, a gaping hole leading into nowhere, into a bottomless void. Lloyd had encountered something like this before — back before he'd ever ended up in this world — and that memory alone sent a treacherous, familiar chill running down his spine, his palms breaking out in a faint, involuntary sweat.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Staring at the sight before him, he muttered quietly under his breath, feeling his pulse quicken. — A dungeon... Lloyd had actually heard of this island before — the one known as the Island of Sleeping Waves.

It was famous, first and foremost, for that very lake, one lacking even the faintest ripple — a real lake on a floating island wasn't exactly common to begin with, and a surface that perfectly still was rarer still, something a Player might not stumble across no matter how many islands they explored in a lifetime. But far more significant, according to the rumors that regularly reached Lloyd's ears in the Guild's tavern, was what this island was actually known for — the presence of a genuine Dungeon.

Rumor had it that this island, unlike the vast majority of others, normally floated exclusively in the upper reaches of the Vortex, from which it rarely, if ever, descended low enough to be encountered among the lower, inhabited islands.

What exactly had carried it so far down, and why it had crossed Lloyd's path today of all days, remained a genuine mystery to him — he had, of course, no way of knowing whether something like this had ever happened to anyone else before, but the sudden appearance struck him as deeply strange, right in the middle of otherwise familiar, well-charted territory. There were, in total, two types of Dungeons in this world: Flickering and Static. The first type, Flickering Dungeons, didn't last long.

They appeared suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, in the middle of otherwise perfectly ordinary, unremarkable landscapes, and then, depending on their own difficulty level, vanished just as suddenly, leaving behind nothing but vague rumors and the occasional lost belongings of previous visitors who hadn't managed to get out in time. The second type, Static Dungeons, operated on an entirely different principle.

Such dungeons continued to exist until they were fully cleared — which meant Players had to track down and kill the Dungeon's Boss for it to finally close, returning the surrounding space to its original, undisturbed state. But the Dungeon on the Island of Sleeping Waves deviated slightly from the usual classification, even among Static Dungeons. Its Boss had once been a genuine Nightmare — a creature extraordinarily rare specifically for green-rank dungeons.

But, fortunately for everyone in the surrounding area, that Nightmare had been slain long, long ago, well before Lloyd had ever learned such worlds even existed — except the dungeon itself, defying every rule and all logic, had never closed after its Boss's death. Which could only mean one thing: something still remained hidden somewhere in its depths, something Players had yet to find and clear, some unfinished threat or reward stuck between worlds.

Among Players, persistent legends had long circulated that somewhere in the dungeon's farthest, uncleared halls lay hidden either a secret boss no one had ever defeated, or an entire treasure vault holding untold riches, capable of turning any penniless drifter into an unimaginably wealthy person overnight.

But in all these long years, no one had ever managed to find anything of the sort, no matter how many desperate souls had ventured down into the impenetrable darkness of the fissure — many of whom, according to rumor, had never come back out.

The Dungeon had simply remained abandoned, sunk into the eternal, undisturbed silence of its motionless lake, and only occasionally did stray Players wander by — usually just to complete some simple quest, like the very one currently rolled up in the inner pocket of Lloyd's backpack, or else to rest here a while before moving on to other islands.