“I swear not to lie to anyone in this room. I will not withhold information that could affect their interests. I will keep secret anything entrusted to me. I will not betray them, reveal their location, or disclose their actions—unless one of them commands it.” Eleon swore the Oath before Bob, making it binding.

  “And that last part?” Billy asked. “Seems a little convoluted.”

  “There’s a chance we might need to use him as a double agent, Billy,” Bob explained.“We may want him to plant information.”

  The Oath had been sworn only in the presence of the Losers. Including Pob in it would be unfair to Eleon. You shouldn’t put your life in the hands of a sworn enemy.

  “Okay, spill the beans,” Jenna said. “How did your people reach Belona? Interplanar travel is supposedly impossible for Experientials. Losers can manage it because we exist outside the Compendium, and even then, we need two of us to make it possible.”

  “It is impossible for Experientials, but not for dungeons,” Eleon replied.

  “At least, that’s what I believe,” he clarified.

  One hundred days ago

  The expedition finally reached the location marked on the map that Necessity had provided. Governance himself had given him the map and the numeric key needed to navigate the labyrinth within the tower.

  Only the most evolved members of each faction were permitted to participate, following Necessity’s explicit instructions. Many had refused, reluctant to leave their families and homeland behind.

  A little over two thousand individuals reached the Black Tower, which stood in the midst of a lush forest teeming with savage wildlife.

  Despite its ominous name, the Black Tower was a squat, vine-covered structure no taller than two stories. The stone appeared old and weathered, lending the building an air of mystery and antiquity.

  The only distinguishing feature was a single unguarded entry. There were no windows, no other doors, and no signs of habitation—just a mass of stones with a door in it.

  The door led to a weathered stone ramp that descended into the underground. It was a long, arduous walk down it. Eleon did not want to think about how many tons of earth and stone lay between him and the air above.

  They finally reached a vast chamber where a large creature, the size of a whale and vaguely resembling an insectoid dragon, rested in a pool. Eleon watched in fascination—he could clearly see the workings of its internal organs through its transparent skin.

  Andara approached the beast, eager to uncover a new mystery.

  “Do not speak with the Keeper!” Eleazar shouted at her as she approached it.

  “It gives answers, but they always come at a terrible price. Necessity was very clear about this.”

  Andara stepped back; no one wanted to mess with the head of the Coven.

  At the end of the chamber, an endless hall led into darkness, seemingly going on forever.

  The left side of the hall was a featureless wall, while large openings lined the right, each spaced twenty feet apart. Each of these openings led into another hall, identical to the one they had emerged from—another endless shaft of darkness punctuated by more entries.

  “What is your take on this, Gala?” Eleazar asked his sister.

  “There is only one way this can be interpreted. The numbers represent the order in which the entries must be crossed. First, the ninth door. Then the third from the passage beyond it. Then the fourth of the next. Twenty-nine crossings in total. Then we will reach our destiny.”

  “Bando,” Boral said to one of his underlings. “Get into the passage at the fourth entry. I want to see what happens.”

  “Wasn’t it supposed to be the ninth, your Excellency?” asked Bando, who looked like a wooden caterpillar on a bad hair day.

  “Yes, but I want to see what happens when you do it wrong,” Boral said jovially.

  Bando did the equivalent of what wooden caterpillars do instead of swallowing spit, and obeyed. They waited for ten minutes. Nothing happened.

  “Well, it seems we must not stray…” Boral patiently explained, but then Bando appeared again, looking flustered and afraid.

  “Thanks, the gods,” he breathed, “I thought I would never make it out alive.”

  Andara laughed, a thousand melodic voices sounding at once. Even her laughter was evolved.

  “Shame on you and your Committed, Boral. He gets lost for five minutes, and his spirit breaks.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bando exclaimed indignantly. “I have been looking for the way out for at least five days.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Silence followed his words.

  Even Andara stopped laughing.

  A booming, metallic sound emerged from the lake. It came from the dragon-like creature. It was laughing.

  “Space and time do not operate in the Black Tower as they do outside it. Get lost in those tunnels, and you may spend months searching for a way out. Your servant was actually one of the lucky ones. And without a key, all paths lead back to me,” the creature’s voice echoed directly in their minds.

  “I see you have one,” it continued, eyeing the map Gala was holding.

  “Treasure it closely, but do not hope it can be used for more than it was intended to. I hope you like the place you are going to,” the creature said with a predatory smile. “But if you don’t, you can always return here. I can provide you with keys to new destinations. For a price, of course.”

  “Pay no attention to it!” Eleazar shouted. “Necessity warned us it would try to deceive us. Let’s just follow the instructions.”

  The large group began its slow migration through the tunnels, ensuring that no one strayed down the wrong path. After a long journey, they finally reached a different hall, one that had a distant light at the end of the tunnel and no exits along the walls.

  When they emerged, another world awaited them. The sun had a reddish hue and was noticeably smaller than the sun in their world. It was setting on the horizon. A trio of small moons hung in the sky, whereas there should have been only one. The stars were also unfamiliar; Eleon could not recognize a single constellation.

  There was still a tower, but instead of being covered in vines, it was now coated in sand. They had found themselves in the middle of a desert.

  Now

  “You think that Tower was a dungeon?” Bob asked. “Does anyone here know anything about that?” He turned to Jenna and Billy.

  Billy was their dungeon expert, and Jenna had memorized Discovery’s treatise on dungeons. Unfortunately, neither of them had any helpful information.

  “That doesn’t mean much,” Jenna added. “There are thousands of dungeon tags, many of which are still unknown. Billy himself has created three new ones just this past month,” she reminded them.

  “If that’s the case, we must assume that these Imperials come from the world that was activated immediately before Pantea,” Bob continued. “But even so—why didn’t they use it against us? Why didn’t Necessity attack Earth directly?”

  “Perhaps it’s because the Earth’s System, unlike Belona’s, is still active?” Jenna suggested.

  “That could very well be it. There’s so much we don’t know. Damn it, Discovery, why did you have to burn out your own library?” Billy complained.

  “Because leaving it intact would have helped us, and she was forbidden from doing that,” Bob replied. “It’s the only explanation for all her hysterics and book-throwing. She knew the Compendium was watching, and she had to put on a show.”

  “Poor Discovery,” said Billy. “We have really messed up her life.”

  “That goes both ways, you know,” Jenna glumly added.

  Eleon went on with his tale.

  They had camped in the desert for about three days, while Imperials with evolutions best suited for exploration and stealth explored the land.

  Contrary to their first impressions, this was a heavily populated world, but its people lived in seven megacities scattered across it. Each of these colossal settlements had tens of millions of residents.

  “Millions of them close to each other? How are they not swamped with dungeons? Do people stop emitting Essence once the system becomes locked?” Gala asked.

  Eleon thought that was highly unlikely. Why would Necessity have given them dungeon seeds if that was the case? But he said nothing. He was not supposed to speak, and Governance was no longer around to protect him.

  He was proven right three days later, when the presence of the Imperial Host caused the manifestation of a small, rank-one dungeon in their vicinity, an oasis filled with worm-like monsters.

  Andara wanted to try one of the seeds on it, to see how it functioned, but both Boral and Eleazar opposed the idea.

  “We have 69 seeds, one for each Beli dungeon. I will not waste a seed on a rank one dungeon just to satisfy your curiosity,” said Eleazar.

  “Why did you choose the Guzzler’s den?” Bob’s voice took Eleon’s mind back to the present.

  “It was the nearest one, and under light guard. We turned it into the main base of operations and guarded the seeds there. Eleazar needed them close if they were to take the rest of the dungeons,” Eleon explained.

  “The Imperials were never a closely-knit force,” Eleon went on. “The only thing holding them together was Boral and Andara’s mistrust of each other. Eleazar was always seen as a compromise. Eleazar kept the Guzzler’s Den as the base of operations for his faction, but the next two dungeons went to Andara and Boral.”

  “They agreed to guard all the seeds together, under a magical lock that required a key from each faction leader to open. Supposedly, all the progression cores we got were also stored in that same chamber, but I know that bit was a lie. The other factions kept their own progression cores for themselves; they only gave a token fraction of them to Eleazar for safekeeping, with the idea of sharing them equally between all.”

  “My brother, that idealistic fool, was the only one who kept the agreement. Most of the cores you stole came from the Unfocused. Because of that, they are the weakest faction right now.”

  “Everything is in chaos now. Imperials largely ignore the Beli and fight each other for their dungeons and their cores. We were supposed to have as many as we wanted available. Now we are limited to the nineteen we already have, and that is not enough for the stunt they want to pull. Ranking up to the Omega level requires an enormous amount of cores.”

  “You have more problems than you think, and so do the Beli, for that matter,” Jenna stated.

  “Do you know what is going to happen in sixty days?” asked Jenna. “All those progression dungeons are going to turn into Tribulations, at the same time.”

  Eleon swore in old imperial. “I knew Necessity was not playing fair. He wants Belona destroyed and the Icosahedron in his grasp. He is ensuring he fulfils both goals. Eleazar will not believe me without proof.”

  “You are not telling him anything about this,” Jenna added.

  “We both know he can’t help, even if he wanted to. We could probably take a dungeon or two, but the factions will entrench if they see us coming and defend their remaining dungeons with all their resources. There is only one way we can do this, and we are only going to have one chance at it.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Bob, already fearing the answer.

  “We are going to destroy all nineteen dungeons at the same time,” Jenna answered.