Randy jolted from his daze at the sharp clang of metal against metal. His eyes darted to his two friends—only Vesper flinched, mirroring his reaction. Valoria, slumped against the wall, remained asleep, the noise failing to rouse her in the slightest.

  Randy groaned as he tried to sit up. He hadn't even noticed when exhaustion had gotten the best of him, sending him into a light sleep against the wall. How long had it been since Gerald left? He had no clue.

  "What was that?" Randy asked Vesper as he tried and failed to blink away the fatigue weighing him down.

  "No idea," Vesper said, glancing at the hole to the cavern below with concern. "But it definitely came from down there."

  "Is Gerald fighting something?" Randy asked the obvious. Only Gerald should be down there.

  "You don't think another Savior arrived and encountered Gerald, do you?" Vesper suggested.

  Randy's eyes widened. "Shit—you're right. I need to turn off my distress beacon. Leaving it on will just bait more Saviors to their deaths at Gerald's hand."

  Unlike Bounty Hunters, who had a bad reputation, Saviors were well-respected, and the Hunter community cherished many of them. They were usually good people, and while a little greedy, Ghostwire hadn't seemed like a person deserving of having their face smashed in with an Orc's battleaxe and drowned to death.

  Randy shuddered slightly—the memory of Ghostwire's abrupt death was still fresh in his mind. Dismissing those thoughts, he fished for his phone among the pile of random stuff they had managed to salvage and sighed with relief once he found it. Created by the Ether Technocrats, the chunky phone was crafted from materials harvested from the World Dungeon and was designed with Hunters in mind. It was waterproof, coated in mythril, making it as strong as a shield, and, most impressively, capable of hijacking the dungeons' mana flow to maintain cellular service. That last feature was patented technology by the Ether Technocrats, making the guild extremely wealthy.

  However, for Randy, it was just a stupidly expensive phone, and he was greatly relieved it had survived everything. Switching it on and waiting for the Ether Technocrats guild's unnerving eye emblem to pass, he navigated the menus to disable the distress beacon.

  A sudden soul-wrenching scream almost made him drop the phone out of fright. Randy's heart lurched as he glanced at Vesper, who had gone suddenly pale. The screaming continued, making both of them urgently shuffle toward the massive hole and peer down into the darkness. A single clang had raised concern, but such a pain-filled scream filled Randy with panic.

  "See anything?" Vesper hissed as he dangled over the edge, peering around.

  "No, it's too dark," Randy said, straining his neck to try to see the far shore that Gerald had headed toward. That's where the scream was coming from, but he couldn't make out much from this angle, and with the lack of light.

  After a while, the screaming eventually stopped. Vesper and Randy exchanged a worried look.

  "Should we run?"

  "Probably," Vesper said, wincing as he pushed his broken body away from the hole's edge. "Though I'm not sure we can. You and I are already in such bad shape that even walking to the surface will be difficult, let alone fighting any monsters we meet on the way."

  Vesper left the most significant issue unsaid.

  Randy glanced at Valoria. She was sleeping deeply but was clearly in pain by her expression. She had suffered the worst of them, and it was partially Randy's fault. If he hadn't taken her mana potion, she wouldn't be suffering from such extreme mana deprivation to the point of losing consciousness.

  She was clearly not in a state to traverse a humid goblin-infested jungle, let alone the freezing sand dunes patrolled by the undead or the tunnels of the first floor. It would take them many hours to reach the surface, even in the best of conditions.

  The teleport hub on the fifth floor is technically closer than backtracking, but while the distance will be shorter, the level of the monsters will increase. What should we do if Gerald isn't here to escort us back to the surface? Neither of us can hope to carry Valoria, but I refuse to leave her down here. Call another Savior and go into crushing debt? Is that really my only option...

  A strange rhythmic clinking noise broke Randy out of his troubled thoughts. Once again, he and Vesper shared a look of confusion and concern. They both stayed silent, listening to the noise.

  "It's getting closer," Randy whispered after a few minutes. It was most certainly creeping ever closer as the clinking got progressively louder. "Hold my foot, I'm going to check."

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  It was hard to pinpoint due to the echo, but the clinking noise seemed to be coming from below them and was getting eerily close. Randy maneuvered over to Vesper's side, and once his friend had a hold of his foot, he leaned down the hole further than before.

  He came face to face with a masked, disheveled, suit-wearing man slowly trudging along the cavern's ceiling, his arms dangling, holding a chest filled with riches.

  "Oh, hey Randy," the man said, noticing his gaze.

  Randy's blood ran cold. "G-Ghostwire?"

  The man laughed. "Ghostwire drowned, remember? It's me, Gerald. I just stole his clothes and mask."

  Randy raised a brow. "Why do you kinda sound like him, though?"

  There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

  "I... might have taken more than just his clothes and mask, but let's leave it at that, shall we?" Gerald said.

  Randy nodded and sighed with relief. "Phew, you scared me for a moment. I thought Ghostwire had risen from the dead." How or why Gerald sounded like Ghostwire ultimately didn't matter. He was just glad the monster had returned.

  Gerald let out an amused snort. "No, he most certainly didn't rise from the dead. His face was thoroughly smashed in, and his lungs were filled with water."

  "How do you know that—never mind. What about that loud clang earlier? Were you fighting something?"

  Gerald—who was starting to look more and more like a poor imitation of Ghostwire—tilted his head. "A loud clang?" he repeated, sounding puzzled. "I don't remember a loud—oh, I know what it was." He pointed at his mask. "I was testing the durability of this mask. Turns out even a mithril sword can't leave a scratch—"

  "What about the scream?" Randy abruptly asked. He just had to know what could have possibly caused that pain-filled scream.

  "Oh, that was me again," Gerald simply replied, once again pointing to the mask. "This cursed artifact wasn't lying when it said it couldn't be taken off by any means. It fused itself to my very soul."

  Randy felt a wave of relief after learning that the clang and scream had originated from Gerald, but now he was concerned about this mask. "It's really not removable? Did mithril really not leave a scratch—wait, how did you get a mithril sword anyway? Those are super desirable."

  "Found it sticking out of this chest filled with Golden Credits, or at least that's what Appraisal told me," Gerald explained. "I just wanted the sword, and these credits didn't seem tasty, but I thought you might want them."

  "They are for me?" Randy asked in disbelief as he stared at the chest practically overflowing with credits. There had to be enough to buy an apartment in there. When people said the third floor of the World Dungeon was a treasure trove, this is precisely what they were talking about.

  Randy had never expected to see it with his own eyes, though.

  "Well, I have no use for them," Gerald said as he pulled the chest closer to his body and barely managed to haul it with him as he crested the edge of the hole by walking just like Ghostwire had. With a grunt, he set the chest down with a dull thud and sent a few golden credits spilling onto the floor. "These are all for you to avoid that debt thing you were so afraid of."

  Randy shook his head. "I couldn't possibly accept all of these credits when it's you who is saving us."

  Gerald's shoulders sagged. "So I hauled them up here for nothing? I knew I should have just left this chest down there with the rest of them."

  "There's more?"

  "Yeah, why?"

  Randy pondered for a moment. He really felt it was wrong to accept a single credit, even if it was a gift from his Savior. While they had come down here as a team with the intention of finding loot, as Randy and his friends were all broke, it was actually Gerald who did all the work. If anything, they just got in his way.

  "How about this," Randy reasoned, "if you want to live on the surface, you're going to need money. Keep these credits for yourself, and perhaps we can return here later to retrieve the rest. Only then will I accept some as a gift from you."

  Randy genuinely didn't feel it was proper to take Gerald's credits, but there was another reason he was insisting on not accepting them. What if Gerald later found out how valuable those credits really were and wanted them back—or, even worse, felt cheated and hunted him down over it?

  There was truly a life-changing amount of credits in that chest, but if there was apparently more, he could be patient. They had killed the only other human who knew of this place, Ghostwire, so the chance of someone stumbling upon this underground cavern was low.

  Gerald seemed to contemplate his solution for a while and eventually agreed. "Fine. I will keep these credits for myself."

  Randy smiled and saw his exhausted face reflected in Gerald's shiny mask. He looked terrible.

  Gerald bowed down and grabbed a fistful of the credits. The mask on his face hissed open as it fractured into four separate pieces, revealing his face and soulless eyes beneath.

  "I thought the mask couldn't be taken off?" Randy asked curiously.

  "It can't," Gerald replied, waving around the four pieces of the mask and showing they were actually attached to black tendrils that were emerging from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. "But there are ways I can move it around at least."

  The sight was quite haunting. Randy gulped and changed the topic to the fistful of credits Gerald was now holding. "What are you doing with those credits?"

  "This chest is too heavy to carry around, so I was going to store away a few handfuls."

  "Where?"

  Gerald looked up to meet his gaze. "My stomach."

  "Huh?!" Randy said, not sure if he heard right. How could someone store coins in their stomach, of all places, besides those sick magicians on television? "Do you not have a storage skill of some kind?"

  "No?"

  "...no?"

  Gerald paused. "Your body comes with a built-in storage pouch. Why would you not use it to keep these credits safe if they are so important?"

  "What? No," Randy shook his head. "Our stomachs are for digesting food, not to use as a storage pouch," he sighed, amazed he was even having this conversation.

  "Oh... I see." Gerald looked back down at the fistful of credits. "So if I were to regurgitate credits, people on the surface would find that strange?"

  "Yes!?" Randy was once again wondering if bringing this monster to the surface was a good idea. Obviously, it wasn't. But there were undeniable benefits, and Randy would rather be on Gerald's good side than betray him now and think anywhere was safe.

  "I see," Gerald said, his face contorting with consideration, but then proceeded to eat the credits anyway.