"All of the dungeons, they are connected. But this realm is different. The energy here… It's stronger—it feeds us all. Only pieces without classes can survive here for a while longer than those classed by the weaker realms. Perhaps that is why you were sent here. But you will still die."
Rhea’s voice was a blade. “Define ‘classed by the weaker realms.’ What are the parameters of that classification?”
"This place is not like the other realms. You do not get a tutorial like the others. There is no training for you, no guiding hand to point you toward the lesser traps or the smaller predators. You learn by bleeding—through death. You learn by being hunted."
“A guiding hand,” Jamie repeated, his voice hollow. “People get a guiding hand?”
Corbin’s jaw was tight. “Forget the hand. What’s the immediate tactical disadvantage? What do they know in the first five minutes that we didn’t?”
"The floors..." it began, its voice barely a whisper, each word more like a death rattle than a coherent sentence. "The dungeon... Dungeons... They are not prisons. They are... constructs. Designs. Machines. All of them."
Harris stared. “Machines designed for what? What’s the product?”
“A living system. A system that feeds. Each floor is a part of that design. A stage. A test. A way of measuring—testing, the worth of those who wander through. All who are sent here. All those who wander through."
Henderson’s breath came fast and shallow. “Measuring our worth for what? Who’s watching the test?”
David's foot ground down just a little more, as if to prompt the priest further. The pressure made a sickening crackle under his boot, but the creature barely flinched. Its hatred was still there, bubbling beneath the surface.
"You're cattle to it," it muttered bitterly. "But it's more complicated than that. The dungeon is an intelligence, not some mindless entity. Its structure—its hierarchy—all dungeons controlled by forces beyond even the highest levels."
Evans’s gaze swept the treeline, then returned to the priest. “Forces. Are they in this dungeon? Can they be reached?”
Mara’s eyes were locked on the creature. “If it’s an intelligence, can it be bargained with?”
Theo hefted his greatsword, his voice low. “Can it be killed?”
The priest’s single good eye slid from Evans, past Mara, and settled on Theo. It stared at him, at the sword he held. A wet, gurgling sound welled up from its ruined throat. The sound deepened, hitching on broken ribs, until it became a low, choking rattle—a laugh. It didn’t answer him at all. The laugh said everything.
Theo’s knuckles whitened on his sword hilt. “Answer me, you twisted bastard.”
The priest just kept laughing that wet, dying laugh.
David increased the pressure under his boot. The laughter cut off with a sharp, pained gasp. “Enough. Where is the floor sovereign? What is he—it? The thing in charge of this particular testing chamber.”
The priest’s breath sawed in and out. Its eye, gleaming with malice and a strange exhaustion, looked past David, toward the shattered canopy where the red and yellow streaked black sun bled through. “Head toward the burning eye… and you will find the sovereign. Head away from its light, into the deep valley where the stone weeps… and you will find the Marked Legion.”
“What is the sovereign?” David asked, his voice flat.
“An unchanging foundation,” the priest whispered. “A king of dust and old magic. The Wraith-Wyrm. A great skeleton that rests by the high sun-rock. It has been the sovereign of this floor… for longer than your kind has understood fire.”
Mia let out a sharp, involuntary gasp. Theo stared, the color draining from his face. “A wyrm,” he breathed.
David looked at him. “The hell is a wyrm?”
Theo’s head snapped toward David, his eyes wide. “It’s… It’s a fucking dragon’s little brother. No wings, sometimes. All serpent, all muscle, all teeth the size of spears. Usually buried in mountains or deep lakes in the stories. How the fuck is that the first-floor boss? What kind of scaled-up nightmare shit is on the second floor? A god-killing titan?”
A ripple of pure dread went through the group. Harris closed his eyes. Corbin and Evans exchanged a single, grim look that spoke of insufficient ammunition. Jamie looked like he might be sick.
David absorbed it. A giant, undead serpent-dragon. The local manager. He looked back down at the priest.
“What’s on the second floor?” he asked.
The priest’s eye was beginning to film over. It smiled, a terrible stretching of torn lips. “You will never know.”
David pressed his boot down harder. A distinct, grinding sound came from beneath his sole. "Hey, kemosabe. Cut the crap and be straight."
The priest’s body stiffened. "I do not know. It is difficult to ascend."
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
David raised a finger. He channeled a thread of heat energy into his demonic field. A tiny flame ignited at his fingertip. He mixed it with his own demonic power. The flame turned a deep, absolute black, like a piece of the sun had been inverted, a hole in the world that seemed to pull at the light.
He nudged it forward through the field itself, making the black flame drift to hover just above the priest's eyeball. The priest’s eye watered, its gaze locked on the dead spot of fire an inch away.
"All I have heard," the priest hissed, the words seething with pain and fear, "is that each floor is different, unique... some parts constructed from the dungeon itself, others pulled from realms outside. The higher you go, the more powerful... and more aware the beings are. But you are not meant to climb. Not really."
Theo shifted his weight, his greatsword scraping the dirt. "What does that mean?"
The priest’s body stiffened. "I do not know. It is difficult to ascend. The stair is not meant for creatures like me. The gates are guarded by the sovereign's chosen, and the toll is paid in power I do not possess. I have spent my existence on this floor. I know nothing of what lies above."
David stared at the creature for three full seconds, assessing the ragged truth in its voice and the empty fear in its eye. It didn't know.
"How many floors are there?"
The priest's one good eye blinked slowly. "I do not know. I have only heard tales of five floors and I have heard whispers of a hundred. I know only that they exist, and that we are here."
David's eyes sharpened. "Not meant to climb?" He shifted his weight again, just for emphasis. "You want to explain that a little more clearly?"
The priest's good eye flickered briefly toward the others, before it settled back on David. "You were brought here to test you. But you should not be here—you should be in one of the lesser realms, receiving a tutorial, being measured by a gentler standard."
David's lip curled in a mix of disbelief and disdain. He glanced around at the others, their faces tense and confused. "And what happens when we reach the top? What's at the end of all this?"
The priest said nothing. It didn't know.
Theo's voice cut through the air, low and rough, but full of intent. "So if we don't want to be part of this system... we fight our way out?"
The priest's rasping laugh echoed in the air, a sound that had no joy, only the hollow mockery of suffering.
"Fight your way out? There is no fight." It hissed, the remaining strength in its body flickering. "To escape... to break free of the dungeon itself... You would need to know the secret of the higher floors. But none knows that. Not even the gods."
"Then why are you still here?" David's voice was flat. "If you don't even know how to escape, why bother with all this?"
The priest's eye twitched again, the remnants of malice still burning through its injured form. "I am a servant. A faithful of the abyss. A vessel of the dungeon's will. I am not here to escape. I am here to see the end of this iteration."
It paused, its breathing a wet struggle. "But…” the priest hesitated. “Among you, four are exceptional pieces, but you.." Its eye was fixed on David. "You are so exceptional I would not believe it if I had not seen it with my eyes. The abyss will covet you. My faith would welcome you."
“Sorry, I stopped going to church when I was twelve,” David said. “Don't have the attention span for it.”
“You said the Marked Legion is in the other direction from the sun,” Rhea said. “Who’s in charge of them? How many are there? What’s their structure? Do they have magic users?”
The priest’s breathing was shallower, not even looking at her. “Their numbers are Legion. That is their name and their truth. They are beasts… without substance. They act according to their nature. They do not matter. They are a storm of claws and teeth, not a kingdom with a throne. They consume, they mark their territory, they move on. They have no leader you could bargain with. Only the strongest brute at the front of the swarm.”
David looked at the priest. He really, really wanted to enthrall it. Force it to teach him how to fly, how to make shields, how to use magic properly. But he didn't have the space. He could probably figure out how to release Corbin, but that would present an entirely new problem. Making the priest an undead might have worked, he could study its energy as a zombie, but it would be mindless.
"Are there more abyssal priests?" David asked. When he had more skill levels, he'd have to hunt one down.
The priest's eye was dimming. "The faith is enduring. The deep abyss has many fingers. Yes."
David's foot pressed down harder, as if squeezing the last ounce of defiance out of the priest. The priest's eye closed slowly, its breath shallow and labored. It would die soon—David could feel that, the life flickering out of it as the dungeon's grip tightened. But that didn't matter now. There were too many questions, and not enough answers.
“The flesh golems,” David said. “How do you use them?”
“You cannot,” the priest rasped. “It is a ritual. A process of binding and…”
David's gaze turned to the others as he stopped listening. Henderson was still fuming, but he seemed to be regaining his composure, his anger still raw but tempered now with a sense of confusion. Corbin was rubbing his temples, his thoughts clearly spinning, while Mara and Jamie exchanged glances, their expressions unreadable.
"Does anyone else have any questions?" David asked, his voice softer now, though the weight of the Situation still hung over them all.
Everyone was quiet.
David sent a mental command to his thrall.
The creature jolted once, then went still.
[You have defeated a Hobgoblin — Abyssal Priest Variant Level 17]
[Lvl 8 ? Lvl 9]
David looked at Mara. “Can you bring the priest back?”
Mara stared at him, then at the corpse. “It barely has one leg. It’s too high-level. It’ll come back at maybe level nine, it’ll be crippled and useless.”
David said, “It’ll still be useful. It can fly and shoot superbeams out of its mouth. Legs or no legs, it’s basically a turret.”
He turned to the others. “So… thoughts?”
Jamie, his spear now resting on his shoulder, shook his head, displaying an uncharacteristic seriousness David found disconcerting.
"Just one. If we're supposed to be "food" for this place.... how do we turn the tables?”
David thought for a moment, the priest's words repeating in his mind. "I think," he said slowly, "We climb. We look for a way out—if there are other dungeons, other difficulties, we find a way to get there; maybe even get home. I think we climb to the top—if we stay here… we’ll never get home. I don't want to be the ruler of a shitty floor—I want tacos and pizza and gambling. If this place is a machine... maybe we need to break it.
Mara's eyes narrowed. "And you think we can?"
David looked from the dead priest to the faces of the survivors, pale and shell-shocked in the bloody clearing. He glanced up toward the distant, oppressive line of the dungeon walls cutting into the red sky.
"I think we don't have much of a choice," David said, his tone matter-of-fact. He nodded toward the direction of the sun, where the undead wyrm supposedly slept. "The whole game's rigged. Someone really skimped on the welcome package and screwed us. Could've been a starter zone with cute frogs. We got the haunted dragon's front lawn instead." He looked back at the group.
“But the machine still has rules. We just have to find a bigger wrench."