Chương 523: B8—Chapter 28: Huh?!

By the time Mahya got her next level, we were bored out of our minds. Fighting was never my cup of tea, coffee, or anything else, but if I was doing it, it should at least be a bit exciting. Now, it felt like conveyor-belt factory work. Root monsters come, Rue sprays them, and we vacate the area in due haste to escape the smell. Snakes come, I tangle up one or two, Al freezes the rest, Mahya does the axe-scissor thing on them, and I turn them into crystals. Next.

At one point, I caught myself yawning from boredom while I held the snakes captive until Mahya dealt with the frozen ones. On top of that, the number of monsters dropped considerably. It had been over three weeks since we stopped hugging the barrier and started moving deeper into the ring. Now, we were well inside it and often had to search for a while before finding the next group of monsters. None of us paid any attention to the solitary ones. We dealt with those without even stopping, almost as an afterthought.

After Mahya finished jumping around and whooping about her new level, Al's expression slowly turned serious. He looked between the two of us for a long moment before speaking.

"I propose that we either leave the dungeon or transition to the next ring." My eyebrows shot all the way to my hairline.

"You want to move deeper?" He gave a small one-shouldered shrug.

"I do not have a preference. We can either continue to level up or leave, but we must do one or the other." He tapped his giant sword against a tree.

"As things stand now, our progress has become so effortless that I do not believe we will gain any further levels. Yes, the monsters are still higher level than us, but from everything I read in my family's archive, even if the monsters are stronger, if the fighting itself is too easy, we cannot gain levels from them."

"Mahya just did today." He gave a shallow nod.

"You are correct." Al stored his sword, folded his arms over his chest, and leaned back against the abused tree trunk.

"However, for over twenty days, none of us killed a single snake. We left them all for Mahya to finish. Had the fights been harder, I believe she would have leveled up faster." Mahya snorted and tossed a pebble at him.

"You did participate in the fighting. You froze them, and John bound them."

"Yes," Al said, completely unfazed as the pebble bounced off his shoulder, "but we did not kill them. I believe that is the important part." Mahya looked at me while absently turning a crystal between her fingers.

"What do you think?"

"I'd prefer to leave, but knowing you, you want to move deeper. Am I right?" She shifted in place, fidgeted with the crystal for a second, then gave a small nod. I almost agreed, but then a thought crossed my mind.

"Just so we're clear, what level are you aiming for?" She blinked at me as if she didn't understand the question.

"What level are you planning to reach before we can leave?" I asked again.

"Forty?" she said, though it came out sounding more like a question than an answer. I crossed my arms and stared at her.

"You're asking me?" She huffed, shot me a death glare, and straightened her shoulders.

"I'm hoping to reach forty, but I'm not sure you'll have that much patience."

"And how many levels do you need for that?"

"Now only two." She said it so quietly that without my advanced Perception, I probably wouldn't have heard her at all. Humming to myself, I thought it over. It had taken her about two months to gain those two levels. If we moved deeper and the monsters and fights got harder, she could probably gain another two in five or six weeks. Looking around at the deep forest, I thought about my enchanting education.

I could do that anywhere, and honestly, fighting didn't seem that bad now that we had the tools and methods to deal with this place. With a sigh, I looked at her and nodded. Mahya launched herself at me so fast I barely had time to react. Her arms wrapped around me in a crushing hug that pushed all the air out of my lungs, and before I could even complain, she planted a loud smacking kiss on my cheek.

"You're the best." I motioned toward Al as I tried to inhale again.

"We have another team member who gets a say." Mahya waved me off dismissively.

"He said he doesn't care either way. You're the problem child." Now it was my turn to glare at her, but sadly, it slid off her like water off a duck's back. Absolutely zero effect. Two days after deciding to stay, while moving inland toward the next barrier, we came across a river. Or maybe "wide stream" was a better description. It was about two meters across, with trees arching over it like a green tunnel and vines hanging down into the water.

The stream itself was surprisingly clear, the current slow enough that I could see leaves drifting along the bottom. All of us stopped automatically and stared at the water, waiting to see what kind of nightmare would crawl or jump out of it. Nothing did. Mahya bent down, picked up a stone, and tossed it into the stream. The splash echoed through the forest. Ripples spread across the water, disturbing the hanging reflections of the trees above. Still nothing. She looked back at us with a questioning expression.

Al adjusted his stance and gave a faint shrug. I mirrored him. Rue let out a long huff and dropped onto the ground with his head on his paws. There was not much else to say. I opened the house, and we spent the rest of the day by the stream. For the first time since entering the dungeon, there were no bangs from monsters throwing themselves against the outside walls, no scratching sounds from the lashing vines, and no murderous hissing. Just the quiet rush of water and rustling leaves.

That night, I slept like a happy baby and didn't wake up even once. The next morning, I felt so good that, while making breakfast and coffee, I put on music and danced around the kitchen as I cooked. Mahya hopped down the stairs with a radiant smile.

"Spirits, I missed sleeping through the whole night." Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Indeed," Al said from behind her as he descended at a far more dignified pace, one hand resting lightly on the railing. Even he looked more relaxed than usual, his shoulders less stiff. I looked back over my shoulder at them while flipping eggs in the pan.

"I think this place is some kind of safe zone."

"Maybe," Mahya said and frowned.

"But it's weird. Dungeons in under 50 aren't supposed to have those." Over breakfast, we decided to follow the stream toward the next barrier on the jet skis, hoping the waterway was really some kind of safe zone, or at least something similar. Not that we actually needed safety with how easy the fights had become, but the quiet and tranquility were extra nice after weeks of monsters trying to murder us every few hours. We reached the barrier in under an hour, and it was strange.

On both sides of the stream stood a thick wall of vines woven tightly together, far denser than the first barrier. The barrier continued right over the water without actually touching it, hanging there like a massive green wall. Leaning slightly off the jet ski, I could see the bottom of the woven mass clearly enough to estimate it was at least two meters thick. And that wasn't even the weirdest part.

Whenever the waves and ripples from our jet skis reached the bottom of the barrier, the vines recoiled upward as if trying to escape the water. The movement spread through the woven mass in twitching ripples, branches and tendrils jerking back from the stream as if the water physically hurt them. We exchanged confused glances. I had never heard of greenery being afraid of water. It went against every known law of nature.

"Swim under it?" Mahya suggested, leaning forward on her jet ski to peer beneath the hanging vines.

"No," Al said sharply. He straightened in his seat and narrowed his eyes at the barrier.

"We do not know what awaits us on the other side." I lowered my leg into the water, flooded mana through my water channels, and pushed my ability to see through it to the limit. The world beneath the surface sharpened and expanded. On the other side of the barrier, there was only more water, more trees, and thick vegetation spreading into the distance. Nothing else.

"There's nothing there." Mahya's brows furrowed.

"You're sure?" I nodded slowly, still scanning the area through the water.

"Positive. No way I'd miss a monster or anything else. There's nothing there, but just in case, I'll go first." She put her hands on her hips.

"I should go first. I'm stronger."

"Not in the water," I countered. She stared at me for a moment, made a face, then nodded and waved at the barrier.

"Fine. Go ahead." Storing the jet ski from right under me, I dropped into the water. The current immediately grabbed hold of me. Swimming toward the barrier turned into more of a controlled shot through the water as it pushed and pulled me along beneath the hanging vines. A second later, I shot out on the other side. Breaking the surface, I looked around.

"Huh?" On the side we came from, it was just a narrow stream. On this side, the water opened into something much bigger. It wasn't exactly a river, not a swamp either. More like a flooded forest stretching in every direction. Huge trees rose straight out of the water, their roots disappearing beneath the clear surface. Sunlight filtered through the canopy in broken patches, turning parts of the water bright green while others stayed dark and shaded.

Thick vegetation covered every bit of dry ground I could see, but unlike the previous ring, nothing moved. The smell was the surprising part. Fresh water, wet earth, damp wood, and actual living plants. Not the rotten, moldy jungle stink from the outer ring. Even the overwhelming Nature mana flavor was more muted. The air smelled so fresh, without the usual aftertaste of leaves and lettuce, that for a second I just floated there and breathed.

Behind me, the vines over the stream twitched away from the water again as the current touched them. On this side, the barrier also refused to dip low enough to actually touch the surface. I split my mind, connected to Wind as well as Water, and spread my awareness as far as it would go. With the help of the elements, I covered a vast area, and couldn't sense anything alive. There were no monsters, which was good, but also no birds, fish, insects, or anything else you'd expect in such a place.

The whole flooded forest was devoid of all life and felt downright creepy despite the tranquil look. The silence was wrong. No buzzing, splashing, chirping, or distant animal sounds. Just water slowly moving between the trees and leaves rustling overhead. I tried to connect telepathically to the team to let them know it was safe, but couldn't. That was another oddity.

Normally, we could mentally hear each other from almost a kilometer apart, and now there were less than twenty meters between us, but I couldn't hear them at all. I sent some mana into the bracelet from Malith, and still couldn't sense them. That usually happened only when they were inside a dungeon or portal, and I was outside. Even the connection to Rue felt thin. I could still sense him, like always, but instead of a solid line connecting us, it felt like a thin wisp.

Still, thin or not, it was enough to send a feeling of safety and "all is well" down it. Mahya joined me a minute later and looked around with a tense expression.

"We should get out of the water."

"Relax, there's nothing in it." Al joined us next, also scanning the surroundings with obvious caution.

"I recommend we get out of the water." Mahya giggled. I shook my head and repeated myself.

"There's nothing in it. Actually, there's nothing in the water or on the ground for at least two kilometers around us. Further out, I don't know." Rue joined us a moment later. We climbed back onto the jet skis, I snapped a picture, and we continued deeper into the flooded forest at a slow pace. I kept one foot in the water to maintain the connection to it and also kept my connection to Wind, but for over three hours, there was nothing. Just trees, small islands of ground, and water stretching in every direction.

In the early evening, I found an island big enough to fit my house in its smallest configuration, and the next day we continued on the jet skis, still with no living creatures around us. At about noon, we began seeing bigger and bigger patches of land, and at some point, the flooded area narrowed into a river that was just as deserted as the rest of the ring. After about five kilometers on the river, it suddenly ended in the most unexpected way, leaving all of us with our jaws hanging down to our waists.

Built into the forest ahead of us was a gigantic palace. It spread across the hillside like someone had taken a royal palace, a cathedral, and a noble estate, mashed them together, and then buried half of it inside a magical forest. Towers rose high above the trees, some covered in gold-colored roofs and decorations that still gleamed in the sunlight.

Huge sections of pale stone peeked through vines, flowering bushes, and thick greenery that climbed over balconies, walls, and archways without hiding them completely. A waterfall poured down from somewhere deeper inside the structure and fed the river we floated on. A stone path ran along the water, clean enough to look maintained despite the complete lack of people. And the whole place was empty. Not even birds perched on rooftops.

The only sounds came from the waterfall, the slow movement of water around our jet skis, and the wind moving through the trees all around. Mahya looked back at us.

"Are you seeing this?" Al and I nodded, both too dumbfounded to speak. We left the river and walked along it until we reached the first sections of the palace, and it quickly became obvious that the windows I saw from a distance weren't real. They were shaped like windows, complete with frames and decorations, but up close, I could see they'd all been boarded up with bricks. We exchanged another confused glance and continued deeper into the place. Rue was the only one not on edge.

He bounded ahead, tail wagging like crazy, his whole being radiating excitement. I connected to him telepathically.

"Why the happiness?" He bounded back toward me.

"Rue and team go on mystery adventure!" As he talked, he kept jumping in place like he had springs attached to his paws.

"It is so exciting! Like in the movies!" I laughed, scratched behind his ear, and relaxed. He was right. It was a mystery adventure and not something to lose my shit over. When we reached the main building of the palace, all of us froze again. The massive front doors were a dungeon entrance. I looked between Mahya and Al.

"I don't get it," I said slowly.

"Aren't we already inside a dungeon?" Both of them nodded without taking their eyes off the swirling portal filling the doorway. I pointed at the entrance.

"So what the hell?"

"We did come across two connected dungeons in Zindor, and I saw connected dungeons in the past," Mahya said, though she sounded uncertain. I nudged Al with my elbow. He shook his head, still staring at the portal.

"This phenomenon was not documented in my family's archives." That was surprising. Al's archives had information on damn near everything. Mahya took a step toward the entrance, but I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder before she got too close.

"Tomorrow." She looked back at me and opened her mouth, clearly wanting to argue, but after a second, she nodded. I exhaled in relief. After a day and a half in the eerie emptiness of this place, I needed a minute before another dungeon dive. Or maybe a double dungeon dive? Nested dungeon? Dungeonception? Consecutive dungeon dive? I honestly had no idea what to even call this mess anymore. Throwing the whole thing out of my head before I confused myself even more, I opened my house and headed to make coffee.

Coffee was the answer to everything.