[You have slain a level 20 Frost Phoenix.]

  [+20 exp] [shared]

  [You can distribute (2) stat points.]

  Viviana stared at the screen in front of her, having freshly regenerated her wounds. Two whole points in one fight? Twenty experience? She could almost say it was worth the time loss.

  She crawled out from under the bird's corpse. She also noted that Bena was there, too. Snoring. Mana fatigue, she assumed.

  Something drew her vision. A single feather. Curiously, she plucked it out from the Phoenix’s corpse. It crumbled into her hand and then reformed.

  [Frost Phoenix Ashes - Epic]

  [Passive - Lazarus - This ability is automatically activated when the user dies. Upon death, consume the user’s mana to stall the loss of consciousness. This item is consumed upon ability activation]

  Her hands shook. A way to stall death. And for the soulbound, who naturally regenerated, this was as good as resurrection from the dead.

  Viviana knew that keeping the item for herself would be optimal. If she was going to take down her father, and thus the entire Adler-Stern guild, she would need items like that. Stuff to keep her fighting.

  Or I could sell the item. This thing could probably go for ten thousand… no, twenty thousand credits.

  She pushed the thought out of her head. Although she had dealt the final blow, this item was Thomas’s. She walked over to where he was passed out. She placed it on top of him. He’d collect it when he woke up.

  Thomas deserved it. It was his plan, and even though the plan failed because the bird started to fly away, he saved it. They were all supposed to die there, and get retrieved by the proctors in like, two months when they discovered their corpses. This was an unmapped part of the dungeon, after all.

  Thomas had saved all of them.

  Too much time had passed. There were only a couple hours left until the deadline to sell the frost burst organs, and they haven’t even collected one yet. At this pace they wouldn’t make it.

  Not to mention that Bena was exhausted. She used her scouting skill to boost her perception, which allowed her to parry all those feathers, but that extended concentration and duration completely drained her mana. Lucian was carrying her right now. He was carrying Thomas, too, actually. Thomas’s sword toss had taken the life out of him.

  Lucian wanted to pass out himself. He strained his mana a lot to distract the big bird. If anything, Viviana should be carrying all of them. All she had to do was jump really hard and slice a bird open.

  Viivana wasn’t strong enough to carry them all anyways, so Lucian had to pick up the slack.

  With no other directions in mind, given that Bena was passed out, they continued forward with their previous idea– head towards the brightest tunnel.

  Thomas had woken up and started walking, taking a great deal of burden off Lucian..

  Along the way they encountered a few monsters. They didn’t put up much of a challenge. Viviana killed them with ease. The system didn’t even grant her experience for it.

  Eventually Bena woke up. Lucian sighed, taking Bena off his shoulder. Bena groaned and told Lucian to continue carrying her, but Viviana stepped in. She’d carry Bena now. Bena needed all her energy to scout the area. She couldn’t spend it on walking, when Viviana could do that for her.

  Within a couple minutes Bena figured out where they were in correlation to the path that Mizuki provided. It took all her mana once again, but Bena determined they were close to the marked location. Viviana was surprised their strategy worked.

  “We’re right in front of the marked location now,” Bena said. Viviana checked her phonem pulling out Mizuki’s route. Bena was right.

  Massive doors blocked their view. They were slightly ajar– just enough for a person to squeeze through, but nowhere close to fully open. That’s just how big they were.

  If a door screamed “the final boss is past here!”, then it might be more obvious. A giant fight was going to occur, and the Landsknecht were wholly unprepared.

  “There’s no way, right? I mean, how would Mizuki figure out there are frostburst organs if there's a giant monster there?”

  “Look, idiot. There’s a whole pile of them in the middle of the room,” Bena said.

  That was completely unfair. The slit through the door wasn’t angled to see the middle of the room, and not one of them could look through solid objects like they were nothing. “Is it unguarded, Bena?” Viviana asked.

  Bena nodded. “Yeah, it is.”

  Lucian gave her a questioning look.

  “I get it, the room looks super suspicious, but maybe it's our reward for killing the big bird,” Bena said, stifling a yawn.

  Lucian shook his head. “It makes no sense. Mizuki’s route moved through no monsters, and ended up in the same room. If that was the case, then why didn’t they just grab the organs and go?”

  “Maybe they didn’t have a bag of holding.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Then they’d buy one and come back. They’re the great guilds, after all.”

  Viviana thought. Lucian was right. It was definitely a trap somehow, but they couldn’t see anything. If Bena couldn’t see anything, it wasn’t like they could look harder. Yet what could they do? They were too far in to turn back now.

  “Bena stays near the door. She's the most tired,” Viviana said. “Thomas, Lucian, and I head into the room. We pack the bag. Bena keeps her scout skill on. If something changes, she screams, and we make a run for it.”

  Bena shook her head. “I need to go into the room with you guys. If something does change, I’ll be able to sense it better from within the room.”

  “Okay,” Viviana said, picking up Bena and placing her on Lucian’s back.

  “Hey, why?!”

  “If you want to go into the room, then you gotta be carried by someone. And if it does go south, and we need to get out of there, my dash works by electrocuting myself. Your muscles will seize and you might strangle me, or just fall off.”

  Lucian sighed as Bena wrapped her arms around him in piggyback. Lucian shifted, adjusting his grip. Bena shrieked.

  “I’ll guard the entrance, then,” Thomas said. They all agreed.

  With no other remarks, Bena, Lucian and Viviana walked into the room. Slowly, past the massive doors. A giant, circular atrium. An intricate, spiraling pattern was carved into the ceiling, twisting and turning a hundred times. All frozen. It was like an opera house was suddenly hit with an ice age.

  The frost nipped at their faces as they made their way to the center of the atrium. There, hundreds of frostburst organs sat in a nice, neat little pile. A suspicious pile.

  Viviana glanced around the room, peering into all the crevices and cracks but found nothing. Lucian’s head was on a swivel, Bena on his back not impairing his awareness at all. Bena had her scouting skill on, but she wasn’t making a sound. No signal to run away at all.

  Eventually the three of them made it to the center of the atrium. Viviana looked back. Thomas was still there, just waiting at the entrance. Viviana breathed out a sigh, the warm arm misting up in the cold dungeon. Lucian put Bena down. It was time to put the organs in the bag.

  They counted quietly as they worked. They had to be delicate– accidentally putting just a small amount of mana into a frostburst organ would trigger its detonation sequence, and then they’d have a couple seconds to throw it before it exploded. And if somehow a piece of mana infused shrapnel hit another organ…

  Still, they worked as quickly as they could. Something about this place was off. Like they were in the maw of a giant predator, but they didn’t know it yet.

  “Hundred and forty…”

  “One-four-one…”

  “One-four-two…”

  They kept counting and then they hit their target. “One-Five-Oh.”

  Viviana and Lucian looked at each other. They looked at the pile of organs remaining. Hundreds remaining. If they sold these for at least market price…

  They quickly packed in some more. They’d try to completely fill the bag of holding.

  “Guys…” Bena said. She pointed upwards. “Something’s moving.”

  It wasn’t the signal (Bena screaming), so Lucian and Viviana didn’t pick her up and [dash] for the exit. Instead, they followed her eyes. Upwards towards the ceiling.

  The spiraling pattern was shifting. Ever so slowly, like a creature waking up. “We should go now,” Lucian said.

  Vivian ignored him and kept on packing in organs. She placed some in her pockets. She held some. She even placed one in her mouth.

  Bena screamed. Then the pattern on the ceiling detached itself, forming hundreds of legs. A massive centipede uncurled and dropped from the ceiling. Lucian scooped up Bena. Viviana activated her [flash step], simultaneously igniting all the sensitive frost burst organs she carried. She chucked them behind her as she ran, ignoring the explosions and the roaring of a monster.

  The three of them ran for the exit as a centipede the size of a building scrambled after them, roaring all the while. Viviana glanced in the direction of where she was going. Thomas was already running, having gotten a head start. Smart.

  Chaos, as the four of them ran through the doors, and the centipede smashed straight through, its hundred legs proving to be more than adequate grip on the icy tunnels of the dungeon.

  Lucian screamed. “Viviana, do something!”

  “What do you want me to do?!”

  “Guys… I’ve used too much mana… I’m gonna sleep, okay?”

  Viviana ran over and slapped Bena’s face. “No! You can’t sleep! We need you to scout the correct path back!”

  It was no use. Bena was as limp as the bag of holding slung over Viviana’s back. They were screwed.

  “Guys!” Thomas yelled. “I think I know where we are! We can go to the room with the big bird! The entrance was small, so maybe the centipede won't fit!”

  “Lead us, Thomas!”

  So Thomas led them as they ran, and ran, and ran. The world rumbled around them as the incessantly stubborn centipede remained chasing them. Bena still wasn’t waking up. Lucian was getting tired. Viviana was carrying the bag of holding. It reduced the size of everything inside, but the weight was still proportional to the sum of stuff inside. And it was very, very heavy.

  Viviana pulled up her system and invested the two points she got from the big bird into END. Her END stat increased from 2 to 4, instantly giving her relief as the pain in her muscles lessened. It didn’t make her any faster, but it was the most optimal investment. Putting points into MIN might allow her to use [flash step] a couple more times, but gaining a couple meters was nothing compared to how far they were from the entrance of the dungeon.

  Viviana truly believed that the stupid centipede would follow them all the way there. Maybe it wouldn’t even stop then.

  Just then Landsknecht burst into the room where the big bird lay dead. They ran past the big bird. The centipede trampled it. Poor big bird.

  They ran even further, into the entrance where they came from. The entrance was trampled. Poor entrance.

  “It’s…catching… up…” Lucian panted. Viviana grimaced. She didn’t want to do this, but she had to. She reached into the bag of holding, pulled out three credits worth of organs (one of them), put some mana into it, and threw it behind her. Goodbye, half a bowl of noodles.

  A small explosion.

  “What are you doing?! Throw more!” Lucian yelled.

  Viviana looked back. Oh, the centipede is like, right there.

  “But it’s so expensive.”

  “We have like three hundred! Just throw some!”

  Reluctantly she reached into the bag and threw some more. Goodbye, half a bowl. Goodbye, half a bowl. Goodbye, half a bowl.

  “Throw a handful you idiot!” Lucian yelled. Thomas didn’t bother with words. He snatched the bag. Viviana made a half hearted attempt to retrieve it but it was no use.

  Thomas made a larger opening in the bag and shook it, flaring his mana all the while. Viviana saw two hundred credits fly through the air.

  A devastating explosion boomed behind her. The centipede stopped… for a second. Then it kept chasing.